
Book i Li fa 



l<b 



ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 



ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA, 



WILLIAM BODHAM DONNE. 



* 




C 1887 

C' o^* 



,* LONDON: *> 



/ 
JOHN W. PARKER AND SON, WEST STRAND. 

i8<8. 






PRINTED BY 

JOHN EDWARD TAYLOR, LITTLE QUEEN STREET, 

LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS, LONDON. 



PREFACE. 



These Essays on the Drama, or on subjects con- 
nected with it, were written for the occasion, and 
accordingly any little interest they may have pos- 
sessed at the moment will probably by this time 
have become extinct. I have been repeatedly urged, 
however, by persons in whose judgment I confide, to 
reprint them, and I have yielded to their wishes 
rather than my own. 

By additions, retrenchments, and modifications, I 
could perhaps have rendered these Essays better 
worth reproduction. But I prefer leaving them as 
they were originally written, since in that form they 
attained the approbation I most value. 

My grateful acknowledgments are due to Mr. 



VI PREFACE. 

Murray, Mr. J. Chapman, and Messrs. John W. 

Parker and Son, for their permission to reprint from 

the ' Quarterly ' and ' Westminster Reviews ' and 

'Fraser's Magazine/ respectively, the contents of 

this little volume. 

W. B. D. 

The Grove, Blaclcheath, 
November 2, 1857. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Athenian Comedy 1 

Beaumont and Fletchee 34 

Plays and theie Peovidees 67 

Songs feom the Deamatists 89 

The Deama 120 

Chaeles Kemble 156 

The Deama, Past and Peesent 187 

Populae Amusements 207 



ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA, 



ATHENIAN COMEDY.* 

M. Guizot's Essay upon the 'Life, Writings, and Age 
of Menander/ belongs to that order of ' studies ' of 
classical antiquity in which Germany and France 
abound, but which are in little esteem at our own 
Universities. To this department the contributions 
of English scholars are few in number and inconsi- 
derable in value. They have generally preferred the 
practical but somewhat dreary paths of pure philology, 
and left to foreigners the more attractive regions of 
biography and general criticism. Our periodical Jour- 
nals occasionally present the reader with some excel- 
lent essays on ancient authors ; but such lively and 
learned treatises as M. Guizot's are seldom, if ever, 
published under the auspices of the Pitt or the Cla- 
rendon press. We do not imagine our Bachelors and 

* Beprinted from the ' Westminster Keview.' 
Menandre ; Etude Historique et IAtteraire sur la Comedie et la 
Societe Orecques. Par Gruillaume Gruizot. 8vo. Paris, 1855. 

B 



A ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

Masters of Arts to be less sensible than Continental 
scholars of the beauties of Classical Literature ; but 
either they lack encouragement from the public, or 
are earlier engrossed by the cares of the world. 

While the tragic drama and the Aristophanic comedy 
of the Athenians have attracted their due share of 
notice, both from those who amended their text, and 
those who entered into their dramatic or philosophical 
spirit, the new, or, as we may venture to phrase it, the 
Genteel Comedy of Athens, has elicited comparatively 
little attention. This partial neglect may be as- 
cribed to two causes, — to the fragmentary condition 
in which the latest offspring of the Attic theatre has 
come down to us ; and to the grander forms of imagina- 
tion and art embodied in the elder drama. Through 
every disguise, through the change of creeds and 
ethical ideas, through the resisting medium of a dead 
language, through mutilation of parts and corruption 
of texts, through the mists of an extinct religion, and 
the veils of obsolete party feuds, the presence as of a 
great spirit standing before us is perceptible in the 
Athenian drama. Never was the indestructible life 
of Grecian genius more apparent than when, some 
years ago, Mendelssohn's ' Antigone' was produced 
on the London stage. The music alone was worthy 
of the story : the libretto was alternately tumid and 
feeble in its language; the actors were encumbered 
by the stilted sentiments put into their mouths, and 
baffled by the slow and sculpturesque evolutions and 



ATHENIAN COMEDY. 3 

situations of the plot ; the choruses looked and sang 
like Minor Canons gone distracted ; and the costume 
bore about as close a resemblance to the original 
theatrical garb as the Eglinton tournament bore to 
the lists of Ashby. Yet, through every disadvantage 
and deformity, Mendelssohn's music was not the only 
impressive portion of the performance. If it did not 
transport the spectator to "Athens or Thebes/' it 
brought him at least within ken of an august Titanic 
power from whose countenance not even the decay 
and dishonours of the grave had effaced all its primal 
beauty. For from beyond the tomb, and from a dis- 
tant' shore, and through the glare and dissonance of a 
modern theatre, came authentic voices of passion, and 
gleams of grandeur and loveliness, that rolled back 
the mists of centuries, and revealed at least a portion 
of the original brightness. Uncrowned and deposed, 
the majesty of Sophocles was still right royal, and 
asserted its claim to the homage of the spectators. 

The Aristophanic comedy has never been put to a 
similar trial ; and, even with the aid of music, could 
hardly be rendered intelligible to a modern audience. 
The ethical principles of Tragedy are the property of 
mankind : they rest upon our fontal passions ; they / 
resolve themselves into extant results. If " the woes 
of old great houses" formed the staple of so many 
Athenian dramas, they have also furnished the plots 
of f Lear' and 'Hamlet'; if fights fought long ago were 
rehearsed by the author of the f Seven against Thebes' 

b2 



4 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

and the 'Phcenissse/ the wars of the Roses and the 
Barons no less filled the historical canvas of Shake- 
speare. The Nemesis in c Macbeth' is not less appal- 
ling than the Nemesis of the ( CEdipns ;' and the vati- 
cinations of Margaret of Anjou "strike as cold" as 
those of Cassandra of Troy. But Comedy enjoys no 
similar privileges. Its life is the life of the present ; 
it catches the Cynthia of the minute; its mirror, 
unlike Agrippa's, reflects only the spirit of its own 
age. The Lord Burleigh of 'The Critic' is a plea- 
sant burlesque; but the historical Lord Burleigh is 
inadmissible in comedy. An Athenian playwright 
would have revelled in impersonations of Chatham's 
gout and flannels; of Pitt's crane' s-neck ; of Sheri- 
dan's ruby nose, and Fox's shrill tones and bushy 
eyebrows. The modern dramatist who should re- 
produce them, would not cause even the injudicious 
to laugh, and would be rewarded for his attempt by 
a general sibilation. We leave to Gilray and Leech 
this department of the " comic business" of politics ; 
and, although our pantomimes occasionally indulge 
in allusions to the Commissioners of Sewers and 
Sabbath-Observance Bills, such matters are excluded 
from comedy and even from farce. Such was not the 
usage of ' ' Eupolis, Cratinus, and Aristophanes ;" nor 
did either the Government of the day or the public 
demand from them any such abstinence. The news 
of the moment was mostly the theme of their dramas; 
and the poet of the Old Comedy who should have 



ATHENIAN COMEDY. 5 

preferred general to local and contemporaneous topics 
would as certainly have been hooted from the stage, 
as a dramatic author would now be, if he brought 
before the public the Convocation of the Clergy, or 
committed a breach of privilege by parodying a 
Maynooth debate. 'The Clouds ' or 'The Birds' 
would consequently not affect a modern audience 
like the f Medea' or the 'Antigone.' The satire 
would be pointless; the allusions unintelligible; 
the choral songs, in immediate connection with the 
broadest farce, would seem to us a Mezentian union. 
We should desire to consign the one to Grisi and 
Mario, and banish the other to some suburban saloon. 
The Aristophanic Comedy cannot be transplanted from 
Greece at all, and hardly from the precincts of Athens. 
The poet and his audience were nearly as local as 
many of the interludes of Moliere, expressly composed 
for an occasional fete at Versailles. It is difficult to 
conceive an audience more thoroughly absorbed in 
the business of the scene, or less disposed to be easily 
pleased, than an Athenian audience in the time of 
Aristophanes. Usually it is sufficient to secure the 
applause of spectators, if the plot of a comedy be 
skilfully contrived, the manners faithfully copied from 
the life, the morals at least conventionally sound, 
the dilemma probable, the passions intelligibly evoked 
and directed, and the humour and situations strange 
or absurd enough for surprise and laughter. But 
these conditions of success are as far from exhausting 



O ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

the powers of Aristophanes, as they would have been 
from contenting his susceptible and critical country- 
men. It was not enough for the author of a popular 
comedy to be a wit of the first order ; he was required, 
in the Old Comedy at least, to be a poet also of the 
first rank. The songs of ' The Birds' and the choruses 
of s The Clouds' were not less essential to his "first 
night," than the fun of Trygseus and Strepsiades. 
We know not indeed whether the comic, like the 
tragic dramatist, were necessarily a musician and a 
ballet-master ; but he certainly must have possessed, 
in no ordinary measure, the gift of suiting his words 
to the music and his situations to the dance ; and we 
can hardly conceive Aristophanes to have entrusted 
any leader of the orchestra, or the professional Vestris 
and D'Egville of his days, with either his complicate 
songs or his grotesque ballets. Neither was it enough 
for him to be a perfect master of his own art and its 
scenic or pantomimical accompaniments. He must 
have felt, or affected to feel, an intense interest in 
whatsoever interested his countrymen at the moment, 
whether it were the war in Sicily, the most recent 
play by Euripides, or the last frolic of Alcibiades. 
That Aristophanes himself was an active party-man 
we know. He was a zealous member of the Peace 
Society, and a hearty opponent of Young Athens and 
the philosophers. Under the regime of the Old Co- 
medy, indeed, the dramatic poet was not only author, 
manager, musician, ballet-master, and perhaps actor 



ATHENIAN COMEDY. 7 

also,, but he was the Athenian "Times' and ' Punch/ 
wielding alike the scourge of invective and ridicule, as 
regarded politics, and the Athenian ' Quarterly ' and 
' Edinburgh/ — the Minos and Rhadamanthus of cur- 
rent literature, 

And as was the poet, so was his audience. The 
Athenians were essentially a dramatic people : sudden 
and quick in their emotions, gifted with a keen per- 
ception of the beautiful and the ludicrous, with fine 
organs of sense, and surrounded by objects the best 
calculated to train, sharpen, and mature them. They 
were moreover a gossiping, scurrilous, and news- 
loving race, delighting in novelty, and impatient of 
uniformity either in their business or amusements. 
But predisposed as they were, in virtue of these qua- 
lities, to dramatic entertainments, they enjoyed only 
brief opportunities (at least, so long as they adhered 
to their old customs) of indulging this taste. Their 
theatres were not open all the year round. Their 
Opera-house — the Odeum — was closed after a brief 
season; and their Theatre Eoyal — the Temple of 
Bacchus — was licensed only during the greater and 
the lesser Dionysiac Festivals, — that is, during a few 
weeks in the spring of each year. Neither, as in 
Home, were their susceptibilities blunted by the ex- 
hibitions of boxers, fencers, or wild beasts ; and the 
Athenian manager would have been fined by the Court 
of Areopagus, if he had not indeed been previously 
stoned by the people, who should have affronted their 



b ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

taste with the spectacle of Earthmen, African children,, 
or professors of the art of walking on the ceiling. Into 
two little months was condensed every species of dra- 
matic entertainment, from that of "gorgeous Tragedy," 
rivalling in its pomp and earnestness the ceremonials 
of St. Peter's in Easter-week, to the satiric afterpiece 
resembling in its extravagance the modern pantomime. 
Tightly was the vessel hooped in, and effervescent ac- 
cordingly were its contents. Neither must we mea- 
sure an Athenian theatre in the season by any modern 
comparisons. San Carlo, La Scala, and Her Majesty's 
Theatre in the Haymarket, must hide their diminished 
heads beside the theatre of the Athenian Iacchus. 
Eour thousand spectators would have " no room for 
standing, miscalled standing-room," in the most capa- 
cious European playhouse. Twenty thousand specta- 
tors were easily accommodated in the huge oval of the 
Temple of Dionysus. And how discordant were the 
ingredients of this enormous mass ! There was little 
respect for persons in these assemblages. Cleon would 
find himself seated beside his enemy the sausage-sel- 
ler ; an elbow of stone divided Socrates from Anytus ; 
and the noisest brawler of the Pnyx might be comfort- 
ably niched beside the decorous and the respectable 
Nicias. The Government and the Opposition occupied 
indiscriminate benches. There was the party cla- 
morous for war, because it supplied the arsenal at the 
Piraeus with hemp, timber, and salt pork, mixed up 
with the party clamorous for peace, because it could 



ATHENIAN COMEDY. 9 

no longer vend its figs and honey in the markets of 
Thebes and Megara. The High-Temple party, which 
denounced the philosophers as atheists, was placed 
cheek-by-jowl with the free-thinking party, which 
derided the priests as impostors ; and there were the 
young men, who cried up Euripides as the father of 
wisdom, close packed with the old men, who abomi- 
nated him as the father of lies. 

Tor every class of the spectators, and to nearly 
every individual among them, the Old Comedy yielded 
entertainment and excitement. The demagogues ap- 
plauded the caricature of Nicias and Demosthenes; 
the aristocrats hailed with equal applause the portrai- 
ture of Cleon in f The Knights/ The Sophists were 
" shown up" in Socrates, pale, unshaven, meagre, and 
meditative; the mathematicians in Meton; the soldiers, 
full of strange oaths, and crested like game-cocks, in 
Lamachus. And, like the modern Parisians, the 
Athenians laughed heartily at themselves, as repre- 
sented in the old dotard Demus, the victim of every 
adviser who would take the trouble to pick his pockets. 

But for such dramatic saturnalia, not freedom only, 
but a high degree of external prosperity, was indispen- 
sable. So long as it waxed fat, the Athenian Demus 
kicked lustily; so soon however as serious reverses 
befell it, there came a long farewell to the license of 
the stage, and to the zest for the Old Comedy. After 
the disaster at Syracuse, the people began to look grave; 
after its prostration at iEgospotami, jesting was not 

b3 



10 



ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 



to be thought of. The tyranny of the Thirty was in- 
deed short-lived ; yet although Thrasybulus restored 
their freedom, he could not give back to his country- 
men their former cheer and alacrity. They had become 
a sadder, if not a wiser people ; and indeed thence- 
forward there was little cause for extraordinary mirth. 
The assembly of the people shouted as of yore, when 
Demosthenes evoked the memory of the men of Ma- 
rathon; but the contemporaries of Demosthenes no 
more resembled the heroes of Marathon and S ala- 
rms, than John Bright resembles Sir Philip Sidney. 
Athens had wrestled with and been thrown by Sparta, 
backed by the gold of the " great king." But a more 
formidable foe than either Sparta or Artaxerxes was 
now undermining Athens with his gold, and gathering 
round its borders with "war in product." A man 
of Macedon, whom Pericles would have deemed un- 
worthy of a vote in the Agora, was now busy in the 
councils of the Athenians. Abroad they were ill 
served by impotent generals ; at home they were be- 
trayed by unjust stewards. The people had ceased to 
feel any strong or perdurable interest in the honour 
and dignity of the commonwealth. It hired soldiers 
to fight its battles, and mariners to row its galleys. 
Indolence whispered peace ; and peace seemed to bring 
with it its own warrant, in the shape of exemption 
from invasion, of a steadier influx of money, of an 
increasing population, and greater leisure for amuse- 
ment. The promptings of indolence were confirmed 



ATHENIAN COMEDY. 11 

by the precepts of philosophy. The science of Theo- 
phrastus and the doctrines of Epicurus contributed 
equally to transform the jealous, irascible, and am- 
bitious Athenians into a placid and studious people. 
The only eager contests henceforward raged in the 
philosophic schools : and it was thought more worthy 
of intelligent beings to define the summum bonum, 
or to reconcile the cravings of sense with the prin- 
ciples of duty, than to fix their yoke on Sicily and 
Carthage, or hold the balance between Thebes and 
Lacedsemon. 

In every nation, one stage of society brings men of 
impassioned minds to the contemplation of manners, 
and of the social affections of man as exhibited in 
manners. With this propensity there doubtless co- 
operates some degree of despondency, whether as re- 
gards the political or the intellectual present. For poli- 
tically, a nation must despond when it has become 
conscious to itself that its sinews of action are relaxed; 
and intellectually it cannot fail to droop when it has 
arrived at the conviction that the nerves and compass 
of its powers are shrunk and contracted. At this 
stage Athens had arrived in the fourth century before 
the Christian era ; and under such circumstances arose 
the altered form of its dramatic literature. 

We shall not pause upon the period of transition, 
the Middle Comedy. Like its predecessor, it dealt 
largely with personal satire ; but the objects of satire 
were for the most part different. The laws and the 



12 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

altered feelings of the Athenians alike forbade the 
dramatic poet to ridicule the pillars of the State. He 
accordingly fell foul of the philosophers who perplexed 
the young men with their paradoxes ; or of the cour- 
tesans who ruined them by their extravagance. Plato 
stood in the place of Pericles ; and Phryne and Theano 
in those of Cleon and Nicias. 

The audience at a representation of Menander's 
comedies differed in nearly every respect from that 
which had applauded Aristophanes and his rivals. In 
the course of half a century the political life of Athens 
had become nearly extinct ; at least political sentiments 
were banished irrevocably from the stage. It was safe, 
so long as the Demus was in good spirits, and kept the 
purse of all the islands, to hold up to ridicule the 
great party-leaders; but it was ill jesting at the ex- 
pense of a Macedonian Prefect, or at statesmen whom 
the Prefect would at any moment accommodate with 
a company of the Guard. The freedom of the theatre 
and of the assembly of the people had indeed expired 
together : and if Demosthenes had been forced by 
Antipater's agent to drink poison, a cup of hemlock 
was the least a poet could expect, who should presume 
to handle Antipater as Eupolis had treated Pericles. 
Moreover, the spectators who laughed at the license 
of the Old Comedy were almost exclusively Athe- 
nian, or such subjects of Athens as had made the 
city their permanent or casual abode. Most of them 
had dwelt long enough in Attica to imbibe all their 



ATHENIAN COMEDY. 13 

virulence, both local and personal prejudices, and at- 
tended the theatre as partisans. The number also of 
the citizens was carefully limited; the meanest and 
poorest freeman plumed himself on his pure Ionian 
blood, and was chary of extending the franchise to 
aliens. His comedy was as national as himself; and, 
like himself, dealt in gross personalities. But after the 
Macedonians were established in Greece, the barriers 
of the Athenian franchise were thrown down. The 
people, ceasing to respect themselves, became prodigal 
of their privileges; and every adventurer who could 
bully or bribe them was certain of a statue and the 
freedom of the city for himself and his followers. 
Even kings had grown respectable in the estimation 
of the Athenians. The day had been when Dionysius 
of Syracuse had much ado to gain admission to the 
Olympian games. That point however was conceded 
in consideration of the splendid carriage-and-four he 
sent thither: the appearance and condition of his 
cattle subdued the tamers of horses. When however 
the same Dionysius sent a tragedy royal for represen- 
tation at the Athenian festivals, the critics were inex- 
orable, and the play was withdrawn under a perfect 
tempest of hisses and cat-calls. But in the second or 
third generation after, the citizens of Athens, or rather 
the mixed multitude that represented them, had be- 
come more polite. They allowed kings to court them: 
they came at last spontaneously to court kings. Pre- 
sents of corn and wine from the Syrian Antiochi were 



14 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

thankfully accepted; the gold and the compliments 
of the Egyptian Ptolemies were exceedingly welcome : 
there was a time, they thought, for all things ; a time 
to refuse, and a time to receive favours; a time to 
tread on the neck of kings, and a time to erect statues 
to them in the Pnyx. And in the age of Menander 
the latter of these seasons had arrived. 

The revolutions in the public life of Athens affected 
the character of its literary men. A century before 
the birth of Menander its historians had been states- 
men, its philosophers legislators, and its poets gene- 
rals or magistrates. With the Sophists began the 
separation of the lives practical and contemplative. 
As regarded Athens, the Sophists were mostly aliens 
by birth, who could exercise no function of the State ; 
and their gains as lecturers de omni scibili were in- 
creased by their independence of secular business, and 
by their privilege of locomotion. Socrates, the most 
practical of teachers, took his share bravely in all civil 
and military duties; but on his disciple Plato the 
mantle of the Sophists, in one respect, descended. 
For the chief of the Academy was the first who 
broached the questionable doctrine that it was the 
duty of the philosopher to abstain from political em- 
ployments; and the precepts of the master were carried 
out by his scholar Aristotle, both in spirit and in 
letter. The poets were not behindhand in claiming 
the privilege of seclusion. Euripides, who, as we shall 
see presently, approached the New Comedy in propor- 



ATHENIAN COMEDY. 15 

tion as he receded from the Elder Drama, was an 
author by profession ; and in the age of Demosthenes, 
as we learn from the reiterated complaints of the 
orator himself, there was an increasing scarcity of 
men willing to devote their wealth and talents to the 
service of the State. When Menander began to write, 
the separation of the literary from the political world 
of Athens was nearly complete. 

In Menander's generation, accordingly, we en- 
counter a new phase of Athenian society, — a phase 
familiar enough in our own days, but unknown, or at 
least so unusual as to have escaped record, in the high 
and palmy days of the democracy. We then meet for 
the first time with the well-born and wealthy Athenian 
gentleman, whose public duties were fulfilled by the 
regular payment of his rates and taxes, by an occa- 
sional " turn-out" with the city militia, and an occa- 
sional attendance as juryman. Coarser or more am- 
bitious spirits might wrangle in the public assembly, 
or covet diplomatic errands to Pella and Rhodes, or 
impair their patrimonies by equipping a troop of horse 
or a trireme. The utmost that a gentleman could be 
expected to do for his country's service was now and 
then to present one of its philosophical institutions 
with a talent or so, or to subscribe handsomely to a 
tragic chorus. Nor did his seclusion from public 
offices expose him to the charge of lukewarm patriot- 
ism. That virtue indeed had pretty nearly expired 
with Demosthenes; and there was little in the ex- 



16 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA, 

ternal or internal condition of Athens after the battle 
of Chaeroneia to prompt or sustain self-sacrifice for the 
commonwealth. The Athenians sought a master, and 
found many masters : like estates with damaged titles, 
they rapidly changed owners ; Demetrius the Phale- 
rian was their idol one day, and Demetrius the " Town- 
taker" their idol the next ; until their mutability was 
fixed and congealed for ever by the preponderance 
first of Macedon, and afterwards of Rome. 

The career of Menander, so far as it is known, illus- 
trates the political decay of Athens. His father, Dio- 
peithes, had done the State some service as a Gene- 
ral; and had been honoured equally by the friendship 
of Demosthenes and the enmity of the Macedonian 
party. The son however trod not in his father's 
footsteps. His paternal uncle was a dramatic writer 
of no mean repute, and from him Menander probably 
imbibed his predilections for the stage. His means 
were ample ; his education was carefully superintended 
by his relative ; and from Theophrastus, the favourite 
pupil of Aristotle, he learned not only to prefer the 
service of the Muses to that of the State, but also 
to mark the qualities of mankind with a learned eye. 
The " Characters" of Theophrastus, the original parent 
and model of Earle, La Bruyere, and so many prose 
satirists, were admirable lessons for one destined to 
hold up the mirror of life to his contemporaries; while 
the encyclopaedic studies of his tutor were well adapted 
to cherish the faculties, of observation and compa- 



ATHENIAN COMEDY. 17 

rison. The poet was equally felicitous in the choice 
of his friend. The elder tragic drama had dealt with 
the sublime truths or hypotheses of religion, with the 
struggles between fate and free-will, with the opposi- 
tion between man and destiny, or with the strife 
between the Gods of Olympus — the established creed 
of Greece — and the earlier worship of the elements. 
The Elder Comedy had disported itself equally with 
the superstitions of the multitude and the theories of 
the philosophers. It laughed at Jupiter ; it laughed 
at Socrates ; and it inculcated generally that it was 
better to eat, drink, and be merry, than to burn in- 
cense or to sacrifice calves, or go pale and unshaven 
in quest of speculative truth. The New Comedy, 
while it reserved to itself the indispensable privilege 
of ridiculing all and sundry, whether their abode were 
on Olympus, or in the Academy, required a system of 
morals differing alike from that of iEschylus and that 
of Aristophanes. Fate and free-will were too grave 
for it ; mirth and physical enjoyment too coarse and 
indiscriminate. Dealing principally with the domestic 
life of man, it demanded also an ethical system which 
rested mainly on the domestic affections. The philo- 
sophy of Epicurus, apart from its physical specula- 
tions, afforded such a system ; and Epicurus was the 
bosom-friend of Menander. The poet had entered 
his second year when the philosopher was born ; their 
friendship was uninterrupted ; their studies converged 
towards a common centre, since the object of each was 



18 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

man : and Menander, with real or affected enthusiasm, 
compares his friend to Themistocles ; since the one had 
giv n freedom, and the other wisdom, to Athens. The 
writings of Aristotle confirmed the oral instructions of 
Theophrastus and Epicurus. The critical and ethical 
doctrines of the Stageirite were embodied in the co- 
medies of Menander, and we can trace in his verses 
the influence of his tutors; for while he insinuates 
or enforces the milder sentiments of the Garden, he 
indulges in occasional sallies against the doubts of 
the Academy and the eccentricities of the Porch. 

Menander however did not derive his knowledge 
of human character from philosophic sages alone ; he 
studied it in the more attractive form of refined female 
society. We do not mean to imply by this phrase 
that Menander was either in the main a person of 
strict life and conversation, or blest with a good 
wife. Of such conversation we believe there was little 
enough in Athens at the time ; and a good wife was 
hardly to be had for love or money. The condition of 
women in Greece nearly forbade the existence of such 
a prodigy. The wife was the mistress of her servants, 
and the head nurse of her children ; but she was not, 
and she could not be, the companion and friend of 
her husband. Born, educated, and kept through life 
in a state of almost oriental seclusion, the Greek wife 
was necessarily illiterate, unintellectual, and, except 
for her beauty or her dower, unattractive. To dress, 
to gossip, and to eat confectionery, were her highest 



ATHENIAN COMEDY. 19 

pleasures ; she would have subjected herself to divorce, 
had she appeared at the theatre, the games, or the 
philosophical schools; and her partner would have 
deemed it an inexpiable portent, if his better half had 
cited a verse of Sophocles, or questioned him con- 
cerning an opinion of Zeno's. The blue-stockings of 
Athens were for the most part of servile origin, but 
selected in childhood for the promise of their beauty 
or their gifts ; and, according to the prejudices of the 
age, unsexed, before they became the equal compa- 
nions of man. Hence arose a capital defect in the 
Athenian drama. In the repertoire of female charac- 
ters, the women are either furies, vixens, or statuesque 
abstractions. Of all Shakespeare's women, Lady Mac- 
beth, Goneril, and Regan, would alone have been in- 
telligible to a Greek spectator. Juliet, Imogen, and 
Hermione would have been enigmas to him. He 
would have approved Petruchio's discipline, and Iago's 
insinuations. Beatrice and Rosalind he would as- 
suredly have put down for hetserse — no better than 
they should be. 

While Menander was writing verses under his 
uncle's tuition, or noting with Theophrastus the fops, 
bullies, and misers of his native city, a lady of this 
order was causing no slight sensation among the fa- 
shionable circles of Antioch. She was the all-potent 
mistress of Harpalus, the Macedonian Prefect of Syria. 
He had raised to her a statue of bronze in the laurel 
groves of Daphne by Orontes ; at Tarsus he allotted 



20 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

to her apartments in the palace of the Pasargadse; for 
her sake he had relieved her native Athens during a 
season of dearth by a liberal donation of corn; and 
he had publicly announced that he would refuse every 
votive crown from the provincials, unless a similar 
offering adorned the fair brow of his companion. The 
antechamber of the beautiful Athenian was crowded 
with suitors ; heads were bowed and knees were bent 
as her chariot passed through the streets ; and so long 
as Harpalus retained the favour of Alexander, Glycera 
was hailed as a queen throughout Syria and the 
Lesser Asia. 

To descend from a Prefect's palace to a poet's lodg- 
ing may argue some decline of fortune ; yet if we may 
credit the scandalous chronicles of the day, Glycera 
was not ill-lodged under Menander' s roof. Assuredly, 
though he produced at least one hundred and five 
comedies, he did not live by his wits ; for he is re- 
corded to have fared sumptuously every day, and to 
have been prodigal in his dress and fond of exquisite 
perfumes. Long after Menander and his mistress 
had done with the cares or luxuries of life, a writer of 
imaginary letters composed in their names certain 
epistles which we agree with M. Guizot in thinking 
entitled to some degree of credit, so far at least as 
regards the traditions embodied in them. Alciphron, 
the author of the letters, possessed ample means of 
learning the literary gossip of Athens; and so cele- 
brated a poet as Menander, who was besides a man 



ATHENIAN COMEDY. 21 

of fashion and a wit, certainly left behind him some 
rumours of his manners as well as of his genius. 
And we are the more inclined to allow to these letters 
a semi-historical credit, in consideration of the ge- 
nuine tenderness and delicacy exhibited in them. A 
mere forgery is generally very clumsy work. The 
Epistles of Phalaris, for example, and most of those 
ascribed to Plato, betray their spuriousness by their 
stupidity. But through the language of Alciphron 
appear gleams of natural feeling, that argue some- 
thing beyond the invention of an entire stranger to 
the correspondents. And even historically they are 
valuable, inasmuch as they presuppose circumstances 
illustrative of the literary condition of Greece in that 
age. It was no new thing for a Greek historian or 
poet to be a banished man. iEschylus was the victim 
of ostracism, and found refuge at the court of Hiero ; 
Euripides paid the penalty of his philosophic specu- 
lations by exile under the roof of the Macedonian 
king, Archelaus; and Thucydides wrote his account 
of the defeat of Athens at Syracuse, under a plane- 
tree on the coast of Thrace. But these were enforced 
absences from the neighbourhood of all that was dear 
in the world to an Athenian, and the bread was bitter 
which they ate, even though a king gave it ungrudg- 
ingly. Although however the guests of monarchs, they 
were not invited guests. Nor until the Macedonian 
conquests had extended Greece over Asia, and erected 
libraries and academies in barbaric Syria and Egypt, 



22 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

do we meet with any traces of royal patronage to the 
learned. In Menander's age Athens was no longer 
the University of the civilized world. Egypt strove 
with Syria in inviting, and, what was still more to the 
purpose, in pensioning, poets and historians ; and the 
Ptolemies especially had drawn around them a galaxy 
of wits. Ptolemy Philopator with his own royal hand 
indited letters to Philemon and Menander ; and the 
latter exultingly tells Glycera that the invitation to 
Philemon was the less pressing of the two. The King 
was indeed liberal, since he promised Menander " all 
the wealth in the world." But the poet gallantly 
assures his mistress that for all the gold under the 
moon he will not quit Athens, since Athens alone 
contains Glycera. She might indeed accompany him; 
the court of Egypt was in no respect prudish or parti- 
cular : but he will not expose her to perils by water, 
nor to the discomfort of dwelling in a strange land. 
Glycera replies with equal warmth and abandon ; but 
as we have not room for more of these effusions, we 
heartily recommend our readers to peruse them, either 
in the choice Greek of Alciphron, or in M. Guizot's 
version. They are by many degrees more entertain- 
ing than the Grenville Correspondence, and have in 
them a certain flavour of Eloise that renders them 
none the worse. 

The invitation of Ptolemy is authentic, even if the 
constancy of Menander to Glycera be apocryphal; 
and it points to a revolution in the literary condition 



ATHENIAN COMEDY. 23 

of Greece. It indicates indeed the third phase of 
Hellenic literature. At first, like the race which pro- 
duced it, that literature was broken up into distinct 
nationalities. The Ionians appropriated to themselves 
epic poetry; the Boeotians, an uninventive practical 
people, applauded the sound didactic good-sense of 
Hesiod, who gave them excellent advice when to sow 
and when to reap, when to expect fair weather and 
when to look out for rain, or catalogued their Gods as 
methodically as if he had meant to put Zeus, Here, 
and Kronos up to auction. The iEolians and Do- 
rians reflected their national characteristics in lyrical 
composition, yet with a difference, the susceptible iEo- 
lians running over every chord of passion, the earnest 
and warlike Dorians touching only the sublimer strings 
of religious emotion. Paros gave birth to the sharp- 
edged Iambic verse, hereafter appropriated to dra- 
matic dialogue, but at first confined to satirical invec- 
tive. The Dorians of Megara and Sicily, softened 
and enlivened probably by their commercial inter- 
course with strangers, relaxed their "Dorian mood" 
and invented comedy. Tragedy, by an equal anomaly, 
originated with the cheerful and volatile Athenians; 
while Miletus enjoyed for many years a monopoly of 
historians and philosophers. 

The era of nationalities in literature was broken up 
by the results of the Persian War. Athens sprang 
up so vigorously from her prostration by Xerxes, that 
henceforward she became for a century and a half the 



24 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

intellectual centre of Greece. Paris in the eighteenth 
century was not more entirely the arbiter eleganti- 
arum for Europe, than Athens during this era was 
for Greece. No other dialect than pure Attic was 
endurable in civilized speech or writing. The broad 
tones of the Dorians were derided by the critical 
world, as the broad Scotch of King James's cour- 
tiers was derided by the English Euphuists. The 
Boeotians bleated ; the Arcadians brayed ; the Ionians 
whistled ; the Macedonians spoke like the barbarous 
Triballians ; and the language of every Asiatic people 
was compared to the shriek of bats or the bellowing 
of kine. The literature of Athens was no less exclu- 
sive than its language. If the fables of its dramas 
were borrowed from the legends of Thebes or Mycense, 
the denouement of the plot usually centred in Athens 
itself. QEdipus must die, and Orestes be cleansed 
from blood in the grove of the Attic Eumenides, or at 
the tribunal of the Attic Areopagus. Thither is Medea 
borne in her dragon-car ; there Danaus and his daugh- 
ters at length find rest, after " their weary wanderings 
long." The central figure in the historical groups of 
the Dorian Herodotus is the city of Pallas; and the 
security or redemption of her greatness is the theme 
of all the orators. Sparta, Thebes, and Argos have 
no historians. Are not their wars and their revolu- 



tions written in the books of the Athenians alone? 

I 



But the monopoly of Athens, intellectually as well 
as politically, ceased so soon as Greece once again 



ATHENIAN COMEDY. 25 

poured itself forth upon Asia, and re-acted the destruc- 
tion of Troy in the conquest of Babylon and the East. 
The Attic dialect was thenceforward the dialect of 
learned purists alone. The Ionian and Dorian speech 
was revived and modified by Callimachus, Apollonius, 
and Theocritus ; and the Fellows of the Alexandrian 
University prided themselves upon their familiarity 
with the archaisms of Homer and Pindar. For all 
ordinary purposes, men were content to write in the 
language which they spoke ; and although, for their 
convenient and subtle mechanism, they adhered to 
Attic forms in dramatic composition, even the learned 
no longer recoiled from Hellenistic phrases, as from 
the patois of the workshop and the market-place. 

One or two anecdotes of Menander's life remain to 
be noticed before we proceed to the consideration of 
his writings. We are afraid that either his or Gly- 
cera's constancy did not last to the end of their lives. 
Mention is made of a lady named Bacchis ; and of 
her, if Alciphron did not maliciously invent the slan- 
der, Glycera was decidedly jealous. She writes a very 
urgent note to Bacchis, conjuring her by their friend- 
ship not to be too gracious to her lover, who is per- 
versely bent on accompanying Bacchis to the next Isth- 
mian games. She adds — " He is so devilishly given 
to fall in love, that if you can manage to bring him 
back from Corinth tolerably affectionate to me, I shall 
always consider myself your deeply obliged." Whe- 
ther Menander returned as desired, we do not know. 

c 



26 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

But a worse matter than the journey in Bacchis's 
company is intimated. There is an awkward frag- 
ment in which the poet speaks plainly of Bacchis as 
very dear to him. And then Philemon, Menander's 
rival in public favour, must needs take to commend- 
ing Glycera on the stage as a good kind of woman ! 
Whereupon her lover as publicly replied, " She is no- 
thing of the sort." And so, after these almost un- 
mistakable symptoms of a quarrel direct, Glycera and 
Bacchis vanish into utter darkness. 

Once, though prudently abstaining from politics, 
Menander appears to have got into a decided scrape 
with great men. He had been in high favour with 
Demetrius of Phalerum; but unluckily that Deme- 
trius had his day, and his namesake, who bore the 
terrible appellation of " Town-taker," became lord 
and master of Athens. The " Town- taker" knew 
not and cared nothing for Menander. Here was an 
opportunity for taking the conceit out of a popular 
author. And it was not lost. For incontinently an 
information was laid against Menander as a member 
of the Opposition ; and it would doubtless have fared 
ill with him, since the " Town-taker" was by no means 
scrupulous about fines, imprisonment, or even a dose 
of hemlock, when a certain cousin of Demetrius the 
Second interceded for him, and the information was 
quashed. 

He was not, however, destined to die in the course 
of nature, or to complete his 106th comedy; for in 



ATHENIAN COMEDY. 27 

the fifty-second year of his age, he was drowned in the 
harbour of Piraeus. There was no Poet's Corner in 
Athens ; but his countrymen erected to him a tomb 
on the road from the sea to the town, and it was seen 
in the second century of our era by Pausanias, who, 
like Weever, delighted in noting down the " Funeral 
Monuments" of Grecian worthies. 

"To be read by bare inscriptions like many in 
Gruter, to be studied by antiquaries who we were, 
are cold consolations unto the students of perpetuity/' 
says Sir Thomas Browne. Menander's fame, so far as 
regards his writings, rests upon little more than a few 
disjointed fragments preserved by the grammarians as 
examples of Attic diction, or cited incidentally by 
heathen moralists and Christian divines. Yet his re- 
putation is as authentic as if we held in our hands a 
succession of his scenes, or even some of his entire 
plays. 

Superstition has ever been a greater foe to letters 
than barbarism. We owe the loss of Menander's 
plays to the stupidity of the Byzantine priests. Until 
the very end of the twelfth century it was possible to 
procure nearly a complete copy of them; but after 
that period they disappear. A holocaust of precious 
manuscripts was offered to the fanaticism of the Em- 
perors ; and Menander and the new comedy, Alcaeus 
and lyrical poetry, were destroyed, in order that the 
tedious verses of Gregory of Nazianzum might be 
alone read in the schools. The vitality of Menander's 

c2 



28 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

name is owing chiefly to his having been the model of 
Terence, who translated, combined, and modified his 
dramas for the Roman theatre. The Terentian Me- 
nander, which, with all its elegances, bears about the 
same relation to the Greek original that SchlegeFs 
version of Shakespeare bears to the English text, 
after delighting the aristocratical circles of Rome, 
passed with Roman literature into the library of mo- 
dern Europe. There it became the parent of an 
innumerable progeny, and reckons among its descen- 
dants Moliere's 'TartuftV and Sheridan's ( School for 
Scandal/ 

The New Comedy of Greece, indeed, was much 
better suited than its elder drama to planting offsets 
in theatrical literature. It was, as we have already 
seen, much less national in its texture, both as re- 
garded the manners which it portrayed and the ideas 
which it developed. The habits and opinions of re- 
fined society are nearly alike in every nation at similar 
periods of civilization : the number of characters is 
limited, since conventionality produces few varieties. 
The repertoire of the Menandrian comedy is restricted 
to the following generic forms : — the severe and the 
indulgent father; the cunning and the stolid slave; the 
son who is his father's favourite and a scapegrace; and 
a less-favoured son, who is a respectable character; 
the extravagant courtesan; the shrewish wife; the 
bragging soldier; the parasite, whose business is to 
flatter for his dinner ; the freed-woman, who is gene- 



ATHENIAN COMEDY. 29 

rally a nurse or a procuress; and the free or slave girl, 
who is the subject of the love intrigue, but who, from 
the difficulty of representing female characters on the 
Greek stage, is often a mute person, and sometimes 
does not appear on the scene at all. As the Greeks 
lived so much in public, nearly all the theatrical busi- 
ness is transacted in the street or the market-place ; 
for it would have been inconsistent with the manners 
of Menander's age, to represent scenes within the 
house at a period when there was hardly any domestic 
life, except at the lodgings of the Hetserse. 

A history of Greek manners might indeed be almost 
compiled from the fragments of the New Comedy, 
aided by the unmutilated dramas of Plautus and 
Terence. In the first place, the Bobadils of the Greek 
stage represent a class of soldiers which, in the piping 
times of peace, overran and infested every Hellenic 
city. As national feeling died out in the republics, 
the employment of mercenary soldiers became a gene- 
ral practice ; who, when not enlisted by any leader of 
condottieri, sauntered about — the fashionable guards- 
men of the day. To parents and guardians these 
captains and colonels were of course objects of dread 
and aversion : they were the victims of the Hetserse 
so long as they had money in their purse ; and they 
were the prey of all who lived by their wits, of the 
parasite who flattered for a dinner, and of the cunning 
slave who delighted in the role of the unjust steward. 
The later wars of Athens had not only brought with 



30 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

them sweeping social changes, but also had materially 
affected its commerce. Hence, though individuals 
were richer, and less exposed to the arts of informers 
than formerly, the mass of the Athenian people were 
poorer, since they could no longer find employment in 
the wharfs of Munychium or the dockyards of Piraeus. 
The public largesse — the profits of her dominion over 
the islands — was also greatly curtailed, and where 
men can find no honest employment, nor be supported 
as state-paupers, the dull must starve, while the clever 
will live by their wits. The buffoon of Aristophanes 
became the parasite of Menander ; and each represents 
in his respective age a different epoch of manners. 
The free Athenian was gluttonous, sensual, and ob- 
trusive : the degenerated Athenian retained the sen- 
suality of his forefathers; but bowed, lied, and flattered 
in order to indulge in it. 

A common denoument in the New Comedy is the 
discovery that the slave- girl, whose intrigue with the 
heir of the family forms the staple of the plot, is really 
the daughter of a respectable household, who had been 
carried off by corsairs in her infancy, and then sold 
in the slave-market. The Greeks were in all ages ad- 
dicted to robbing on the high seas. Even now the 
Archipelago swarms with petty pirates, who plunder 
the farms and vineyards of the islands, lie in wait for 
the market-boats, and carry off Greek children to the 
harems of the Asiatic Turks. The naval supremacy 
of Athens for more than a century kept these water- 



ATHENIAN COMEDY. 31 

rats in tolerable order ; but so soon as that supremacy 
declined, the iEgean again swarmed with marauders. 
Hence no casualty was more common in Menandei^s 
age than the loss of a child, or even of an entire nur- 
sery. And the recurrence of such discoveries of off- 
spring on the stage, though it is one of the pleasant 
absurdities of Sheridan's f Critic/ appeared a matter 
of course to the spectators of Menander. Lastly, in 
proportion as Athens ceased to be a maritime and 
commercial power, the agricultural habits of the po- 
pulation returned; and hence we meet in the New 
Comedy with so many allusions to the farms abound- 
ing with pigs, honey, and millet, and find so many 
traces of a bucolical turn of mind in fathers of 
families. 

The Athenians were in all ages a sententious race, 
loving curt ethical maxims, proverbs, and epigram- 
matic conceits. The plays of Euripides, who in some 
respects was the model of the later comic writers, 
abound in aphorisms, and are often tedious from 
their dialectic point and formality. Perhaps no pecu- 
liarity has more tended to the preservation of the 
fragments of the New Comedy than the frequency of 
gnomic sentences. Its aphorismal wisdom or sagacity 
recommended it equally to the practical Romans and 
to the saints and fathers of the Church. Here at 
least the new religion might borrow from the old, 
since good sense or good morals benefit all mankind. 
In the absence of any entire drama of this period, it 



32 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

is rash to speculate upon the leading characteristics of 
its authors ; but to judge from the fragments, we are 
inclined to think that shrewd observations on the 
motives and principles of men in daily life were quite 
as remarkable as skill in dramatic plot, or as the 
powers of fancy or imagination. Menander, in spite 
of his luxurious mode of living, appears to have been 
a man of conspicuously sound sense, and to have 
studied all human qualities with a most learned eye. 
His opportunities for observation were of the first 
order. His days were passed in the highest circles 
of a city whither flocked, even in its decline, persons 
from nearly every quarter of the civilized world, in 
pursuit of gain, instruction, or pleasure. The philo- 
sophical schools alone yearly attracted hundreds of 
students to the lecture-rooms of the four greater sects. 
Hither resorted also the amateurs of art, and the 
professional sculptor and painter. In a dialogue of 
Lucian's, written nearly three hundred years after 
the latest of Menander's comedies, we meet with a 
Roman gentleman congratulating himself upon hav- 
ing in his youth quitted the noise, the smoke, and the 
tumult of the metropolis of Italy for the seclusion of 
Athens. From the same writer, who is among the 
best historians of social life, we learn that the Piraeus 
was second only to Alexandria as a common centre 
for the various races of mankind. To that port came 
the Syrian silk-merchants of Antioch; the corn -factors 
of Egypt; the Parthian with his cargo of Indian spices ; 



ATHENIAN COMEDY. 66 

the negro in the train of the Roman prsetor or pro- 
consul; the Iberian with his consignment of silver 
and iron ; and the Massilian Gaul with the wines of 
Narbonne. In Menander's days, the crowd was less 
diversified, but hardly less numerous; and there are 
vestiges in his fragments of a liberal employment of 
these human groups in his comedies. 

, We had intended to lay before our readers an out- 
line at least of one of Menander's comedies ; but our 
space is exhausted, and we must content ourselves 
with referring them to the treatise of M. Guillaume 
Guizot. To our apprehension, the history of wars and 
treaties is often tedious and uninstructive, represent- 
ing one phase only, and that among the most uniform, 
of the human species. Much more interesting and 
instructive is it to trace the identity of man under 
the thin disguises of manners and costume ; to discern 
under the tunic and the toga the passions, follies, and 
virtues which still actuate Mayfair and Whitechapel ; 
and to discover that the distinction between Christian 
and pagan life consists rather in the development of 
man's moral and intellectual nature, than in the su- 
perficial and accidental aspect of new creeds and new 
forms of society. If our readers agree with us on 
this point, we have rendered them some service in 
directing their attention for a few moments to the 
" Life and Times of Menander." 



c3 



34 



BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. 



We are at length enabled to read Beaumont and 
Fletcher with the aid of a well-restored or corrected 
text, and of a full but not burdensome commentary. 
The careless manner in which these playwrights, in 
common with their dramatic brethren, were origi- 
nally printed, has hitherto been very imperfectly 
amended by successive editors. Of the three critical 
editions of their plays which preceded Mr. Dyce's, 
Weber's alone (1812) has any pretensions to merit 
on the score of editorial competence. Of Seward and 
Sympson (1750) it may be said that nearly all they 
did without the help of Theobald's ' Adversaria ' was 
done amiss; and the chief value of the edition of 
1778, generally known as Column's edition, arises 
from its having cancelled most of their interpola- 
tions and conjectures, and restored the capricious 

* Reprinted from 'Fraser's Magazine,' March, 1850. 

The Works of Beaumont and Fletcher. With Notes, and a Bio- 
graphical Memoir. By the Rev. Alexander Dyce. 11 vols. 8vo. 
London. Moxon, 1843-46. 

The Works of Beaumont and Fletcher. With an Introduction. 
By Gl-eorge Darley. 2 vols. 8vo. Moxon, 1840, 



BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. 



35 



yet frequently preferable text of the folios and 
quartos. The tender mercies of their editors have, 
indeed, been often as fatal to the sense or the metre 
of these poets, as were his two wives to the middle- 
aged gentleman in iEsop. The one plucked out his 
white hairs and the other his black, until between 
them he was left bald. 

The present age seems favourable to the revival of 
Beaumont and Fletcher's reputation. Several of their 
dramas have been recently brought again upon the 
stage, and two editions of their entire works have 
been put forth by that classical and enterprising 
publisher, Mr. Moxon. It did not fall within Mr. 
Darley's commission to revise the text of his authors, 
but his Introduction is a spirited and ingenious com- 
mentary on their lives and writings. The student 
of English poetry, who already owes so much to Mr. 
Dyce for his editions of Peele, Marlowe, Middleton, 
and Skelton, will gladly welcome his labours on Beau- 
mont and Fletcher. To his skill in old books and 
archaic lore, Mr. Dyce brings the rarer adjuncts of 
sound judgment and good taste. He applies to our 
native literature the erudition and acumen which dis- 
tinguished Porson among Greek scholars. We know 
not indeed where to look for a more appropriate pa- 
rallel. Mr. Dyce is at once copious in his resources 
and cautious in his emendations. His ear for metre 
is fine ; his detection of obscure or doubtful mean- 
ings is sagacious. He is frugal of comment, while he 



6b ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

is familiar with whatever in print or manuscript elu- 
cidates his authors. He does not, like so many of the 
earlier school of Shakespeare-commentators, use the 
poets as a stalking-horse for his own learning and in- 
genuity. He is as laborious as Malone, without his 
dulness; and as acute as Steevens, without his malice. 
He does not wage in his notes private wars with his 
brother annotators, nor does he, like Warton, find 
parallels between Macedon and Monmouth, or like 
Gifford, affect a surly superciliousness towards all 
who may chance to differ from him. No specimens 
or extracts would convey to a reader not previously 
aware of the state of Beaumont and Fletcher's text, 
the amount of his obligations to their recent editor. 
From his appreciation of particular plays we may oc- 
casionally dissent; but we bear unhesitating testimony 
to the accuracy and diligence, the ability and good 
taste, with which Mr. Dyce has executed his present 
task. 

Mr. Dyce's researches have thrown fresh light on 
the personal history of the poets and on the sources 
and bibliography of their plays. In the latter de- 
partment he has remodelled and much improved 
upon former investigations, even where he has not 
added to them. There is still some obscurity at- 
tached to the origin of many of Fletcher's plots. We 
incline to think that a closer study of the Spanish 
novelists and playwrights would lead to further disco- 
veries of their sources. Mr. Dyce, indeed, states his 



BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. 37 

"conviction that our early playwrights very seldom 
made use of foreign dramas." There is, however, an 
earnestness and rhetorical amplitude in the Spanish 
comedy which must have been attractive to the bro- 
ther poets, to the grave and judicious Beaumont es- 
pecially ; and there are resemblances in the plan and 
conduct of their dramas, in the first acts of their 
comedies especially, which point to the Spanish stage 
as well as the Spanish novelists. They can have been 
under no obligations to Calderon, yet both in tragedy 
and comedy they remind us of him and of his con- 
temporary, Corneille. The hero of genteel comedy, and 
his friend or rival, the pairs of lovers and the pairs of 
valets, the prevalence of wit and banter over humour, 
the vigour of the first act in comparison with the suc- 
ceeding acts, the loose texture and frequent incongrui- 
ties of the plot, are Spanish features. The resemblance 
is even closer in those plays in which Greek or Roman 
characters are introduced; for example, in Calderon' s 
' La Gran Cenobia ' and Fletcher's ' Prophetess.' The 
poetic element is stronger than the dramatic : the 
outline is weak, the ornaments are gorgeous. We 
should be glad to see this question examined by some 
scholar well versed in the writings of Lope di Vega 
and his contemporaries. It is almost the only un- 
worked vein of illustration for the English drama. 

Mr. Dyce's remarks upon the critical and dramatic 
character of the several plays are comprised in his 
'Account of the Lives and Writings' of their authors; 



38 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

and each play has besides a separate introduction con- 
taining its original story, where the source is known, 
and its scenic and literary history. The practice of 
tacking a moral summary to dramas is happily de- 
funct. We could never stomach the entrance of Dr. 
Johnson to comment upon Lear's madness or Bene- 
dick's marriage. It is much worse to read Dr. Ire- 
land's sermons on Massinger. Not content with being 
monitory out of his pulpit, the doctor apologizes for 
sitting in judgment on a playwright at all. He is 
much too good, he intimates, for such employments. 
" Out upon such half-faced fellowship ! " Mr. Dyce 
has juster notions of an editor's duties. What his 
hand found to do therein, he has done with all his 
might, and he leaves the reader to extract his own 
moral. The bias of Fletcher's mind to prurient sen- 
timents and images, his fondness for the debatable 
ground between virtue and vice, his microscopic trials 
of a foible or an emotiou, are palpable enough with- 
out an editor's proclaiming them. We would not 
excuse these faults — blemishes alike in the man and 
the artist, but there should be allowance in the ver- 
dict. Beaumont and Fletcher wrote for " worshipful 
society." The hearing and the reading public of the 
seventeenth century had in these poets and in their 
contemporaries and successors their Balzacs and Eu- 
gene Sues, their ' Jack Sheppards' and 'Mysteries' of 
society — Mutato nomine . . . fabula narratur : our an- 
cestors tolerated grossness ; we endure and applaud sen- 



BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. 39 

timental and melodramatic fiction. It was not merely 
the London 'prentices and sempstresses who crowded 
round the cart and gallows of Mrs. Turner; it was 
not only a rustic or city populace that thronged and 
scrambled before the scaffold of Rush. "The king, 
the queen, the courtiers," in Fletcher's age, applauded 
the language of the scene as an echo of the language 
of the palace. The State-trials in James's reign — a 
small fraction of current offences — attest the moral 
corruption and anomalous vices of the age. In that 
corruption and in those vices Carr and Villiers par- 
ticipated. They were denounced from the pulpit by 
Donne and Andrews, they were proven at the bar 
before Coke and Bacon. The stage may have added 
to the impurities of the stream : it did not originally 
corrupt the fountain. 

So much has been written of late upon Beaumont 
and Fletcher, that in examining their scenic and poetic 
character, however briefly, we can hardly avoid pre- 
occupied ground. But their literary dimensions are 
ample enough to admit of recurrence, and the station 
they have so long held among playwrights warrants 
successive attempts to analyze their merits. Mr. Hal- 
lam remarks that Fletcher's verses are seldom cited, 
and have no enduring hold on the memory. Would 
not his observation apply to all our elder dramatists 
except Shakespeare ? and even in his case quotations 
are rare from ( Timon ' and ' Pericles/ the ( Comedy of 
Errors/ or 'All's Well that Ends Well' We are living 



40 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

in a period of much literary oblivion as well as of much 
literary production. The Bickerstaff family, with all 
their pleasant eccentricities, have given place to Elia, 
'Robinson Crusoe ' has a formidable rival in 'Mas- 
terman Ready/ and to most readers under thirty 
Sir Roger de Coverley himself is almost as much a 
stranger as the heroes and heroines of ' Parthenia ; and 
the ' Grand Cyrus/ That so few of Beaumont and 
Fletcher's fifty- two dramas are remembered, is there- 
fore, in Philosopher Square's phrase, rather "in the 
eternal nature of things," than a proof of their in- 
feriority. The very bulk of their works is adverse to 
familiarity with their contents. If we take away the 
four plays which Porson rendered necessary to the 
scholar, Euripides, the best preserved and the most 
voluminous, is the least known of the classical play- 
writers. But that Beaumont and his colleague, amid 
all the caprices of fashion and under successive tides 
of literature, should have remained "steadfast starres" 
in the dramatic firmament is a token of sterling worth, 
however incommensurate their present reputation may 
be with their contemporary popularity. 

Whether it were from this cause or from the tena- 
city of a few of their plays on the stage, their names 
have always held the next rank to Shakespeare and 
Jonson, while Chapman, Marston, Dekker, and Web- 
ster, poets of deeper though less varied powers, have 
been rescued from oblivion almost within the present 
century, and chiefly through the criticisms of Charles 



BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. 41 

Lamb. Lamb's pregnant and suggestive notes led 
not indirectly to the editorial labours of Gifford and 
Mr. Dyce. Beaumont and Fletcher have, indeed, suf- 
fered occasional eclipse. Goldsmith, in a pleasant vein 
of irony, observes that his age had turned aside from 
Dryden and Otway, and "gone back a whole cen- 
tury" to Fletcher and Shakespeare. Such coupling of 
names by the most genial critic of the Johnsonian era 
is no ordinary tribute to the younger of these poets. 
We know from Pepys that, immediately after the Re- 
storation, Beaumont and his colleague were highly 
popular. The first play, indeed, acted on the re- 
opening of the theatres in 1650 — l The Humourous 
Lieutenant ' — was a production of Fletcher's. Dryden 
asserts that for one of Shakespeare's, two of their plays 
used to be acted in his time; and manager Gibber 
confirms Dryden' s and Pepys' statement, although the 
prose comedy of Wycherley, Yanbrugh, and Congreve 
was rapidly displacing their poetic predecessors. We 
believe the period of their greatest obscuration extends 
from about the accession of James II. to the close of 
Queen Anne's reign. From the latter of these dates 
we find frequent attempts to reproduce their dramas on 
the stage. Monmouth's rebellion and William's dis- 
puted title to the crown may have furnished political 
reasons for withdrawing pieces in which usurpers 
and pretenders to thrones are so frequently introduced. 
The fashion of after-pieces may also have been un- 
favourable to dramas of such length, and making 



42 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

such demands on the actors, as those of Beaumont 
and Fletcher. In the interim, they were out- ranted 
by Lee, surpassed in extravagance and indecency by 
Dry den, repelled by frigid Catos and Jane Shores, 
plundered without detection by manufacturers of plays, 
and adapted without acknowledgment by managers of 
theatres. For "these effects defective" causes may be 
found in the varying taste or prejudices of successive 
generations. 

" The written life of a great poet," says Mr. Darley, 
"is often far duller than the written life of a great block- 
head. The latter, through mere mental unfitness for 
meditative pursuits, plunges blind amidst life's many 
vortices, to attain the pleasure, the profit, or the ex- 
citement from without he cannot have from within ; 
while the poet's deeds are his works — his explore- 
ments and excursions into the world of reflection and 
imagination." 

Certainly many of Fletcher's contemporaries, block- 
heads or not, whether they went in quest of El Dorado 
with Raleigh, or fought under the Lion of the North 
like Sir Dugald Dalgetty, or noted down with Sir 
Symonds D'Ewes the routine business of the Com- 
mons, could have told more of the world and its ways 
than either Beaumont or his colleague. Yet the bio- 
graphies of the latter are not therefore void of instruc- 
tion and interest. Their friendship is touching, their 
fortunes were not unlike, their intellectual structures 
were congenial. In an age when dramatic co-part- 



BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. 43 

nerships were common, their poetic union was noted 
for its permanence and intimacy. "In the most high 
and palmy state" of our elder drama, says Mr. Dyce, 
" when the demand for novelty was almost incessant, 
it is well known that more than one playwright was 
frequently employed by a manager to labour on the 
same piece." Fletcher was so associated with Rowley 
and Middleton, with Massinger and Shirley, and pos- 
sibly with Shakespeare himself. " But there seems to 
be no doubt that the literary partnership which has 
given immortality to the united names of Beaumont 
and Fletcher was altogether different — that it was 
formed and continued at their own free choice, and 
not at the pleasure of a theatrical proprietor." " There 
was," Aubrey tells us, "a wonderful consimility of 
phansy" between them. The idem velle et nolle ex- 
tended to their dress, lodging, and diet, and in one 
particular, for which we must refer the reader to Mr. 
Dyce for the fact and to Ariosto for a parallel, it tran- 
scended all Cicero's rules of True Friendship. The 
" consimility of phansy" may have been fostered by si- 
milarity of circumstances. Both were sons of men of 
worship. Beaumont's father was a judge; Fletcher's 
was a bishop. The education of both was completed 
in " seminaries of sound learning ; " Fletcher's at 
Bene't College, and Beaumont's at Broadgate Hall, 
now Pembroke College, Cambridge. Both, too, came 
of a poetical stock. There were three Fletcher poets 
beside the dramatist, and five Beaumonts. Of the 



44 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

Fletchers, Giles and Phineas are still remembered as 
the authors respectively, of ' Christ's Victory and 
Triumph ' — a poem which Milton laid under contri- 
bution ; and of the l Purple Island ' — a poem at once 
anatomical and allegorical. Of the Beaumonts, Sir 
John, the father of Francis the dramatist, was the 
author of ' Bosworth Field ' and other poems, which 
have been commended by Mr. Wordsworth for their 
"spirit, elegance, and harmony; " and a kinsman, Dr. 
Joseph Beaumont, wrote ' Psyche, or Love's Mystery ' 
— a work from which Pope counselled young authors 
to steal. Nor was the intellectual vein worn out in 
that generation. The present century has produced 
few more accomplished gentlemen, and none worthier 
of a poetic genealogy, than the late Sir George Beau- 
mont, of the Coleorton branch of the family ; and 
Francis Beaumont's mother, a Pierrepoint, connects 
the family with Lady Mary Wortley Montague. Cow- 
per in like manner came of a tuneful race. There are 
two stout octavos of occasional verses, for the most 
part by his near kindred, which will bear comparison 
with any " pieces by Persons of Quality." Hand- 
writing, musical talents, and " the accomplishment of 
verse," frequently run in families ; and should at 
length a genuine poet spring from the stock, while 
he illustrates, he is indebted to it for the transmis- 
sion of the " vein." Sensibility to metrical harmony 
implies a finer organization than common ; and if the 
poet inherit nothing more from his race than a pre- 



BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. 45 

disposition to sweet sounds, he owes to it one of the 
prime elements of his maturer genius. Nor should 
the ermine of the judge and the lawn of the bishop 
be omitted in recounting the formative accidents of 
the career of these poets. There is a stateliness even 
in their lighter moods of comedy, a conventionality 
in their banter, which bespeak reminiscences at least 
of the state and ceremonies of juridical and episcopal 
housekeeping. They were alike in other matters. 
Both were handsome men. Mr. Darley says that 
English poets have generally been so. He is perhaps 
not altogether an unbiassed witness, since he has writ- 
ten some excellent verses himself; but he forgets Jon- 
son, Goldsmith, and Churchill. Both too were famous 
for their conversational powers, f ' being," as a contem- 
porary wrote, "so fluent as to talk a comedy," and 
therefore among the very choicest spirits at the Mer- 
maid in Friday Street. 

Such were some of their points of resemblance. 
But they were alike with a difference — discord which 
perhaps the more closely cemented their union, — 

" Fletcher's keen treble and deep Beaumont's base." 

Beaumont, though not himself a landed proprietor, 
was the descendant of two successive owners of 
Grace-dieu in Leicestershire, and brother of a third. 
He was "smit with the love of song," and of the 
company at the Mermaid, but he had his seasons 
of retirement from theatrical and club life, and saw 



46 ESSAYS OX THE DRAMA. 

the oaks wave and the deer course over the lawns 
of his birthplace. He married, too, an heiress — 
"Ursula, daughter and coheir of Henry Isley, of 
Sundridge, in Kent." Now, as Pompey says, " I 
hope here be truths;" and they tend to show that 
if Beaumont improved his means by writing for the 
stage, he was at least not driven by poverty to au- 
thorship. He was a member of the Inner Temple, 
and, like so many Templars then and since, a wit 
also — a combination seldom so favourable to law as 
to poetry, in spite of the recent example of Mr. Jus- 
tice Talfourd to the contrary. Fletcher's case was 
probably very different. Fortune at first seemed to 
smile propitious on his birth. Queen Elizabeth took 
a fancy to the cut of his father's beard, and preferred 
him with almost railway speed from a prebendary and 
a royal chaplaincy to the deanery of Peterborough — 
from the deanery of Peterborough, in the course of 
five years, to the sees of Bristol, Worcester, and Lon- 
don. Bishop Fletcher was as great a pluralist as the 
Dragon of Wantley, who "devoured churches like geese 
and turkeys," and, from his procedure touching the 
see of London, we fear he was somewhat simoniacal. 
He had a worse fault than simony ; " he was peevish, 
and given to prayer" at unseasonable times, for he was 
the very Dean Fletcher who troubled the dying mo- 
ments of the Queen of Scots with dissuasions from 
Popery. At any rate he was a prosperous gentleman; 
" loved to ride the great horse," says Fuller, ' ' and was 



BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. 47 

condemned for very proud by such as knew him not." 
He might perhaps, but for one false step, have been 
his Grace of Canterbury. But he married a second 
time, and bade a short adieu to all his greatness. Dr. 
Primrose himself was not a more zealous monogamist 
than Queen Elizabeth. She hardly brooked, as Bishop 
Grindal found to his cost, <c speech of marriage " in 
clergymen. However, Bishop Fletcher's well- trimmed 
beard and courtly demeanour brought him ere long 
into favour again : he was promised a royal visit, "fitted 
up his hall at Fulham" in readiness, and, perhaps, 
might have thriven as well as ever but for an untowardly 
accident. He died — some said of grief at her Majesty's 
displeasure, others ' c of taking too much tobacco." Un- 
certain it must ever remain whether he used common 
shag or the finest Virginia, but certain it is that he 
left as many children and as little money as if, instead 
of his pluralities, he had been all his life a curate. 
During his rapid preferments he had been at great 
charges for induction-fees and first-fruits, and did not 
live to reimburse himself by an episcopal harvest of 
rents and fines. Had the Bishop's life been spared, 
the world might have had one dramatist less, for John 
Fletcher was already at Bene't College, and in a few 
years more might have been safely niched in a stall ; 
and, with Abbot or Andrewes in place of Jonson for 
his model, have drawn graver audiences than at Black- 
friars or the Globe. But henceforth he must live by 
his wits. In that age, all popular literature centred 



48 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

in the stage. The theatre was at once the newspaper, 
the review, the magazine, and the novel of the 
seventeenth centnry. We then imported romances 
and invented plays, a process which is now nearly in- 
verted. The stage was not indeed a high-road to 
fortune — Shakespeare and Alley ne being among the few 
who put, or at least kept, money in their purses ; but 
for talents of any mark or likelihood, it was almost a 
sure road to fame. Rowley, a rugged versifier, and, 
" in respect of a fine workman," one of the drama's 
journeymen, is better remembered than many a popular 
preacher of his day; for not even Lamb could have 
made attractive " Specimens of Divines." And be- 
sides the pulpit and the stage they were few avenues 
in that age to literary renown. History was locked up 
in folios, debates were unreported, and the art and mys- 
tery of reviewing was undiscovered. The number and 
fertility of playwrights was unprecedented and unsur- 
passed. The novelists of the nineteenth century are 
not ten times as numerous as the dramatic writers in 
Fletcher's age ; and if the number of readers now and 
then be considered, the proportion of playwrights was 
even greater. We possess a portion only of the printed 
dramas ; the fire of London ; servants as careless as 
Mr. Warburton's; or politic Diets of Worms, have 
thinned their ranks. A much larger portion of acted 
plays was never sent to press, but remained in manu- 
script among the managers' properties. Not a third 
of the Sibylline books has come down to us. 



BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. 49 

Into this broad and swelling stream Beaumont 
and his colleague cast their intellectual fortunes, and 
Fletcher probably staked his whole venture in life. 
To Beaumont tradition, if not express testimony, has 
assigned superior judgment. From his easier for- 
tunes he may have been less enterprising and hasty 
in composition than his friend. Of Fletcher's po- 
verty we have indeed no direct evidence, and in some 
verses prefixed by him to the c Faithful Shepherdess ' 
we have something like a denial of its pressure. 
Mr. Darley asks if Bishop Fletcher, who remembered 
a college, would have forgotten a son in his will? 
But Bishop Fletcher's bequests resembled Diego's 
in his son's ' Spanish Curate.' His executors must 
have asked, "Where shall we find these sums?" 
" The truth is," says Mr. Dyce, " none of Fletcher's 
biographers were aware of the poverty in which his 
father died." The question would be immaterial 
were it not calculated to explain the haste and neg- 
ligence which many of these dramas betray. A 
writer who produced thirty-one plays, with little oc- 
casional help, in eleven years ; who lived in good 
society, and not with the most prudent and thrifty 
associates, had probably an urgent motive "to coin 
his brain or drop its sweat for drachmas." His 
verses prefixed to the ' Honest Man's Fortune' prove, 
however, that Fletcher was rather elevated than de- 
pressed by his circumstances. His mind to him a 
kingdom was. They read like Milton's protestations 

D 



50 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

of his integrity and independence, like Wordsworth's 
' Happy Warrior/ 

The respective shares of Beaumont and Fletcher 
in the dramas which bear their joint names is an 
insoluble problem. It is an interesting one only 
because their plays betray at times the influence 
of opposite schools, and because its solution might 
show how much they owed to Jonson and how much 
to Shakespeare. Beaumont was bred up at the feet 
of that dramatic Gamaliel, Ben Jonson, who under- 
stood " the theorique " of his art better than the 
"practique;" Fletcher is termed by Dry den "a, limb 
of Shakespeare." So long as it was the fashion to re- 
gard Shakespeare as a " wild, irregular genius," Beau- 
mont's superior judiciousness might seem to indicate 
the Jonsonian discipline. But now that the consum- 
mate art of Shakespeare is as universally recognized 
as his transcendent powers, Beaumont's reputation for 
judgment, even if it rested on surer foundations, will 
not avail us. When however we compare the plays 
which Fletcher wrote singly with those which he wrote 
conjointly, the theory that 

" Beaumont's judgment check'd what Fletcher writ," 

must depart into the lumber-room of respectable 
fallacies, where already is reposing Cromwell's dam- 
nation to everlasting fame, and whither Bacon's 
meanness will probably soon follow. For it is uni- 
versally admitted that the ' Worn an- Hater,' was pro- 
duced by Fletcher before his literary partnership with 



BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. 51 

Beaumont began; and the two prominent charac- 
ters in this comedy, Gondarino and Lazarillo, are 
constructed on the Jonsonian model of analyzing, 
or rather running down, an odd fantastic humour. 
Fletcher therefore was as much a disciple of Jonson 
as his colleague. On the other hand, the plays as- 
cribed to both partners, the tragedies especially, are 
neither more nor less judicious than those which 
Fletcher produced after Beaumont's decease. Nay, 
if Mr. Darley be right in attributing " to Beaumont 
chiefly " the ( Knight of the Burning Pestle/ his wit 
would seem to have been the more luxuriant of the 
two ; for in none of the fifty-two dramas is there such 
exuberance of fancy, or such riotous animal spirits. 
Nothing is more deceptive than internal evidence in 
deciding questions of doubtful authorship, where the 
disputed work is not a forgery. It required only the 
common instincts of the pit and gallery to detect 
Ireland's 'Vortigern;' and none but the shallowest 
scholars, and blinded by party zeal to boot, would 
have maintained the genuineness of the ' Epistles of 
Phalaris/ But the case is very different when a con- 
troversy arises whether the ' Rhesus * or ' Iphigenia at 
Tauris' were written by Euripides, or whether they pro- 
ceeded from the Sophoclean school. Here internal 
evidence is a very Will-o'-the-wisp, a preconception in 
the mind of B. of what A. must have written, B. not 
being at all in A.'s secrets, but probably separated 
from him by "sounding seas" and sundry generations. 

d 2 



52 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

"We are not disposed to put much faith in commenda- 
tory verses, having had some experience in testimonials 
to character. Both are alike granted by friendly zeal 
or good-natured indolence. But we incline to think 
that the author of a contemporary eulogy on Fletcher 
has stated the question of his literary partnership 
with Beaumont more fully and fairly than any subse- 
quent commentator or critic : — 

"Some -think your wits of two complexions framed, 
That one the sock, th' other the buskin claimed : 
That should the stage embattle all its force, 
Fletcher would lead the foot, Beaumont the horse : 
But you were both for both, not semi-wits : 
Each piece is wholly two, yet never splits ; 
Ye are not two faculties and one soul still, 
He th' understanding, thou the quick free-will ; 
But, as two voices in one song embrace, 
Fletcher's keen treble and deep Beaumont's bass, 
Two, full, congenial souls ; still both prevailed ; 
His Muse and thine were quartered, not impaled : 
Both brought your ingots, both toiled at the mint, 
Beat, melted, sifted till no dross stuck in't. 
Then in each other's scales weighed every grain, 
Then smoothed and burnished, then weighed all again ; 
Stampt both your names upon't at one bold hit, 
Then, then 'twas coin as well as bullion-wit." 

The scanty personal records of dramatic poets may 
sometimes be illustrated or supplied by the traces of 
contemporary events impressed upon their writings. 
As the abstracts and brief chronicles of their time, 
they may be supposed to have watched with no in- 
curious eye the heavings and flashings of the great 
world-stream that circled their round of life, to have 



BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. 53 

been moved by it to lyrical responses, to have repre- 
sented it in passionate symbols and similitudes. Mr. C. 
Knight, in his ' Shakespeare : a Biography/ amid much 
fanciful and some valuable matter, has shown that the 
myriad-minded bard attentively regarded the move- 
ments of his age, and sometimes embodied what was 
passing around him in everlasting forms and co- 
lours. Beaumont and Fletcher exhibit fewer marks of 
sympathy with the world's business and mutations 
than Shakespeare, or even Jonson and Massinger. 
They appear to have moved between the stage and the 
closet, the Club and the Court alone. We know, on 
unquestionable authority, that they bore a prominent 
part in the symposia at the f Mermaid/ and were sprung 
from fathers, one at least of whom watched anxiously 
the smiles of the Sovereign and the intrigues of the 
palace. But, for any tokens to the contrary, the bro- 
ther-dramatists cared more for Philip Henslowe's ac- 
ceptance of their plays than for "what the Swede 
intended or what the French." The reign of James 
was indeed far less favourable than that of Elizabeth 
had been for poetic sympathy with public events : it 
was the most peaceful which England had hitherto 
enjoyed. Notwithstanding the ghastly abortion of 
the Gunpowder Plot, the dark tragedy of Overbury, 
the expectations and the catastrophe of Raleigh's ex- 
pedition, and the Protestant interest in the Palatinate 
War, it afforded few of those scenes, 

"Sad, high, and working full of state and woe," 



54 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

which filled and made memorable the sway of the 
Maiden Queen. There was no life-long tragedy, like 
that of the Queen of Scots; no stern and solemn 
pause of preparation, like that which awaited the Ar- 
mada; no universal shout of jubilee over the fallen, 
like that which hailed its wreck ; no bonfires for the 
burning of Cadiz ; no welcome of Drake from victory 
and pillage on the Spanish Main. The grave splen- 
dour of Elizabeth was exchanged for slovenly extra- 
vagance: the sceptre had become a pedant's ferula. 
Bacon was indeed the Chancellor; but Oxford, and 
Sidney, and the greater Cecil, had left no inheritors of 
their chivalry or their wisdom. A sullen gloom was 
settling on the national mind. The cloud of Puritan- 
ism, lately no bigger than a man's hand, lay billowy 
on the horizon; the martial genius of the people was 
thwarted by an irresolute and inglorious Sovereign, 
or exasperated by incapable leaders and ill-concerted 
enterprises. Parliaments were grown jealous of mon- 
archy, and monarchy distrusted parliaments. Queen 
Elizabeth had ever wisely distinguished between her 
counsellors and her courtiers : the one ministered to 
the strength, the others to the splendour of the realm. 
James hearkened to favourites, and placed reliance 
in spies ; created a mushroom nobility, and sent away 
malcontent the Cliffords, Howards, and De Veres. 
The Plantagenets and Tudors, however arbitrary at 
times, were English Sovereigns in heart. The Stuarts 
looked abroad for models of kingcraft, and repined at 



BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. 55 

their limitary right-divine. They aspired to the license 
of the Tuileries and the stately ceremonial of the Es- 
curial. But the feeling of the nation reverted to its 
ancestral hostility with the one, and to its recent con- 
tact with the other. Keligious earnestness sanctioned 
political dread ; and the King and courtiers alone had 
forgotten the day of St. Bartholomew and " the sad 
intelligencing tyrant who mischieved the world with 
his mines of Ophir." The Court and the people were 
entering upon a fierce antagonism ; and the drama, if 
it alluded at all to current events, spoke with bated 
breath and in a bondman's key. But although 
many signs of the times are not legible in Beaumont 
and Fletcher, they were not altogether unimpressed 
by them. There is a difference between the tone of 
their sentiments, whether comic or heroic, and that 
of the manlier drama of Elizabeth. There is a moral 
decadence, an imaginative decay. The hues of autumn 
have begun to streak the poetic foliage; the line of 
the horizon is less clear ; the coherence and intertex- 
ture of form and colour are less tenacious and less 
genial. The irony of Sophocles and Shakespeare re- 
gards man struggling impotently with circumstance, 
and is the imaginative expression of the strife be- 
tween Fate and Free-will; the irony of Beaumont 
and Fletcher is the utterance of the satirist on men 
and manners. The former is consistent with the loftiest 
passion and the deepest pathos; the latter is conver- 
sant only with the superficial emotions and conven- 



56 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

tional forms of life. The one betrays a spirit at va- 
riance with itself, and perplexed in the extreme by 
the enigma of life : it is the spirit of Jaques, Timon, 
and Hamlet. The other indicates a temper which 
contemplates and derides the phenomena of society, 
without attempting to solve them by any higher law 
of reconcilement : it is the temper of Lucian, Mon- 
taigne, and Voltaire. We do not rise from the perusal 
of Beaumont and Fletcher much the happier or the 
wiser. They deal too much with the merely concrete 
and conventional to be genuinely humorous or earnest. 
Their flashes of wit and fancy, their crowded incidents 
and startling contrasts, even the voluptuous music of 
their verse, are things of sense and of the scene, not 
echoes from the fontal deeps of humanity. Their 
works may enliven or soothe a vacant hour ; but they 
are not for seasons when the mind would enter into 
its secret chambers and commune with the verities 
of sadness or mirth. "Beaumont and Fletcher," 
Schlegel well remarks, "were men of the most dis- 
tinguished talents : they scarcely wanted anything 
more than a profounder seriousness of mind, and 
that artistic sagacity which everywhere observes a due 
measure, to rank beside the greatest dramatic poets 
of all nations. But with them poetry was not an 
inward devotion of the feelings and imagination, but 
a means to obtain brilliant results." 

Coleridge's remarks upon the brother dramatists 
are for the most part as strictly just as they are acute 



BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. 57 

and ingenious. He is, indeed, one of the best com- 
mentators on these poets, both in what he has written 
and in what he has suggested, and he was the first 
who examined their metrical system critically. We 
think however that he has rather overstated his 
charge against them of " exuberant loyalty." Their 
kings are, indeed, as self-willed and licentious as any 
Greek or Italian despots on record, and their cour- 
tiers as servile and supple as Damocles himself. Yet 
the general impression on reading these dramas is not 
favourable to loyalty; and their treatment of Court 
favourites seems to point shrewdly at their own times 
and real persons. In the plays of Beaumont and 
Fletcher we step from the precincts of a legal mon- 
archy into those of arrogant and unveiled despot- 
ism. It is needless to cite examples when almost any 
one of Mr. Dyce's eleven volumes will furnish them. 
Wherever the action of tragedy or the graver cast of 
comedy turns upon the will and pleasure of the scenic 
King, Duke, or Count, the virtuous suffer unreason- 
ably, and female purity and manly honour are exposed 
to extravagant trials. This may be partly owing to 
Spanish originals, but is also a reflection of contem- 
porary manners. The hot and peremptory Elizabeth 
exacted obedience but not servility, and was often 
better pleased with a frank reply than with a cun- 
ning compliment. The pedantic and equally arbitrary 
James delighted in the homage of his courtiers, be- 
cause it exemplified the theory of his ( Basilicon Doron/ 

d 3 



58 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

or soothed his suspicions of his own irresolute and 
unkingly temper. The king's favourite is a very fre- 
quent character with Beaumont and Fletcher. The 
satire is indeed veiled, but is not the less pungent 
and significant. In the days of Somerset and Buck- 
ingham, Boroskie in the ' Loyal Subject ' is styled " a 
malicious, seducing counsellor to the Duke." Latorch, 
in the ' Bloody Brother/ is quaintly called " Rollo's ear- 
wig;" and in the ' Wife for a Month'' and ( Beggar's 
Bush' Sorano and Heinskirk are the usurper's "wicked 
instruments." More license than this was not likely to 
be allowed to his Majesty's servants. At a later day, 
and under very different circumstances, politics were 
brought openly upon the stage. Bolingbroke and 
the Duchess of Marlborough vied with each other in 
applauding the Whig Addison's ' Cato,' and the coun- 
try party cheered the hits at Sir Robert Walpole in 
the ' Beggar's Opera.' Beaumont and Fletcher were, 
for their age, free-spoken, and implied more than 
they thought it politic to set down. We do not find, 
indeed, that their ears were ever endangered like Ben 
Jonson's for his share in ' Eastward Ho,' or that they 
ever received a hint from the Star Chamber that the 
King or Buckingham were offended. 

Fletcher himself probably regarded with indifference 
his rapidity of composition and the consequent imper- 
fection of many of his plays. He knew well what 
suited the players and pleased the public, and had 
probably no deeper artistic yearnings. He had in- 



BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. 59 

deed little of that earnest sympathy with his cha- 
racters which enforced Shakespeare to infuse his own 
lyrical sensations and self- questionings into his dra- 
matis persona. He had even less of that artistic pur- 
pose and prescience which brooded over Gothe in his 
' Faust ' and ' Iphigenia/ He was rather eloquent than 
impassioned; rather ingenious then inventive; and 
more studious of effect than of consistency or even 
probability. It may however in some measure ex- 
plain, or at least palliate, the feeble coherence or un- 
natural transitions in his plays, if we remember that 
in Fletcher's time there were no after-pieces in the 
modern sense of the term ; for the jigs which followed 
the play were such ballets as we may see at this day 
in booths at country wakes. In the modern theatre 
we require at least two pieces to satisfy our dramatic 
appetites. Our ancestors were less devious in their 
longings, or more frugal of their time. Our elder 
drama was accompanied by neither farce nor melo- 
drama, neither opera nor spectacle. The performance 
rarely exceeded two hours ; and into this period were 
to be compressed all possible variety and excitement. 
The absence of scenery, and the scantiness of appoint- 
ments, were compensated by a rich wardrobe and rapid 
turns in the plot. It is not fair therefore to try such 
pieces as the ' Island Princess/ the ' Sea Voyage/ or the 
' Coxcomb/ by a strict standard of dramatic propriety : 
they belong rather to the staple attractions of the 
Adelphi, to the ' Victorines' and ' Green Bushes/ They 



60 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

were as stimulant and attractive as melodrama, and 
much more poetical. 

Much discussion has been raised as to the quality 
of Fletcher's genteel comedy. For while it is agreed 
that he was the precursor of Wycherley, Congreve, 
and Farquhar, it is disputed whether he surpassed or 
was inferior to Shakespeare in the portraiture of gentle- 
men. Dryden has affirmed that " Shakespeare wrote 
better as between man and man ; Fletcher as between 
man and woman." To this assertion Mr. Hallam 
furnishes the very pertinent reply, that "this will be 
granted when he shall be shown to have excelled 
Ferdinand and Miranda, or Posthumus and Imogen." 
But both Mr. Hallam and Coleridge have suggested 
that, from their higher station in society, Beaumont 
and Fletcher represent the phrase and manners of the 
more polished circles more truly than their great con- 
temporary. We are tempted to turn Mr. Hallam's 
words against himself, and say this may be granted 
when the Don Johns, Don Felixes, and Butilios, of 
these dramatists, shall be shown to have excelled in 
conversation Orlando in Ardennes, Benedick at Mes- 
sina, and Cassio in Cyprus. The difference, we ap- 
prehend, may be thus stated : — We do not go quite 
so far as Mr. Darley, who thinks Beaumont and 
Fletcher's gentlemen, "fancy men" or bucks; but 
we suggest, upon the evidence of their banter and 
their love-making, that they copied more faithfully 
than Shakespeare the language of the Court and the 



BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. 61 

Mall. "To be like the Court was a playe's praise/' 
But James's favourites, who set the fashion, were 
neither men of the highest birth nor the most de- 
corous manners. James himself was not more choice 
in his words than gainly in his person ; and neither 
Carr nor Villiers were Hattons or Chesterfields. 
Even the Puritans admitted that Charles's Court was 
more decent than his father's ; and that staunch but 
candid Loyalist, Sir Philip Warwick, pronounced 
Cromwell's levees "to be greatly more choice and 
solemne" than his predecessor's. It was from the 
earlier and coarser of these originals that Fletcher 
copied his gentlemen. Shakespeare's models, when he 
drew from actual life, were the statelier manners of 
" great Eliza's golden prime." But there is a further 
distinction. Not only were the Benedicks and Or- 
landos — creatures partly of earth and partly of fancy 
— drawn from a more catholic pattern than court 
fashions could supply, but James's Court by no means 
absorbed the gentlemen of the realm. The fathers 
of Hyde, Twysden, Lucy Hutchinson, and Falkland, 
were country gentlemen, and although they occasion- 
ally attended levees, or even were suitors for sine- 
cures, lived much on their estates, and were rather 
brow-beaten than caressed by the modern Solomon 
and "Babie Charles." It may be granted, then, 
that Fletcher caught the trick and passing fashion of 
the spruce gamesters and curled darlings of his 
age : but it does not follow that he represented better 



62 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

the general traits and demeanour of the English gen- 
tleman. 

That Fletcher " wrote better as between man and 
woman than Shakespeare," is an opinion already 
disposed of by Mr. Hallam. We approach with more 
diffidence the following remark of Charles Lamb. He 
has pronounced Ordella, in ' Thierry and Theodoret/ 
" the most perfect idea of the female heroic character, 
next to Calantha in the l Broken Heart ' of Ford." Is 
this a paradox, or a heresy of the most genial and 
orthodox of dramatic commentators ? Had he, when 
he wrote, a momentary oblivion of Cordelia, of Imo- 
gen, and of Isabella ? Does Ordella, like these, dwell 
in the memory ? Is she among our visions ? Is she 
11 remembered in our orisons " ? Mr. Dyce observes 
more justly, that " Brunhalt and Ordella present one 
of those violent contrasts which our authors loved to 
exhibit; and though both characters are strained very 
far beyond the truth of nature, there is unquestionably 
much strong painting in the fiendish wickedness of the 
former, and many beautiful touches in the angelic 
purity of the latter." Mr. Darley has in one sentence 
described very happily the general character of Beau- 
mont and Fletcher's female portraitures. " They seem 
to have caught one deep truth of nature, — their women 
are either far more angelical or diabolical than their 
men." Another remark of Lamb's, however, is full 
of significance. He suggests that the performance of 
women's parts by boys led to the frequent introduc- 



BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. 63 

tion of the page upon the scene — the page being gene- 
rally a disguised damsel in quest of a faithless or un- 
conscious lover. " Our ancestors/' he adds, " seem 
to have been wonderfully delighted with these trans- 
formations of sex. What an odd double confusion it 
must have made to see a boy play a woman playing a 
man ! one cannot disentangle the perplexity without 
some violence to the imagination." An apology was 
made by a stage-manager to Charles II. for keeping 
his Majesty waiting — " The Queen was shaving/' The 
practice however was productive of more than scenic 
ambiguity. It contributed to render both the poet's 
and the actor's delineation of women coarser. Even 
Shakespeare sometimes slides into the temptation which 
this epicenism presents to unlicensed wit. But where 
Shakespeare merely stumbled, his contemporaries fell ; 
and none fell lower at times than Fletcher. The ap- 
pearance of ladies in male attire had indeed become 
so common that Queen Elizabeth declined, on poli- 
tical grounds only, Sir Andrew Melville's proposal to 
escort her Majesty in a page's dress to Scotland, that 
in this disguise she might see, unseen herself, her 
beautiful rival, Mary Stuart. Henrietta and her ladies 
of honour performed, not only " boy Cleopatras " and 
Bellarios, but in the (t Masques at Court," Cupid, 
Zephyrus, and Iris, in very classical and scanty cos- 
tume. Shakespeare rarely employs this scenic device. 
In Julia and Portia it takes the form of a pleasant 
freak : Viola and Imogen resort to it as the readiest 



64 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

escape from their dilemmas j but in Fletcher's come- 
dies the boy-woman is repeated ad nauseam. It is 
adopted in his best plays, it is lavished on his worst ; 
and in ( Love's Pilgrimage' alone we have no fewer than 
three ladies thus disguised. And even where the page 
is not introduced, the knowledge that a handsome 
stripling was before them tended to reconcile the au- 
dience to the license of Lselia, Bacha, and Hippolyta. 
Dryden, who surpasses Fletcher in indecency, had not 
even his excuse for it. Women-actors came in with 
the Restoration ; and Kynaston, who was afterwards 
celebrated for his demeanour in kings and soldans, 
had been equally famous in his youth for his feminine 
impersonations. 

We are not disposed in all cases to admit Mr. Dyce's 
verdicts on particular plays. He seems to us hardly 
fair to Fletcher's later dramas, and to have adopted 
rather too implicitly the opinions of preceding critics 
upon the earlier ones. The ' Maid's Tragedy' is a fa- 
vourite with editors ; and we have some diffidence in 
questioning the merits of a play which has been repro- 
duced on the stage by such competent judges as Mr. 
Sheridan Knowles and Mr. Macready. But we think 
this one of the plays which has " been to the fair of 
good names and bought a reasonable commodity of 
them." It has indeed striking stage-effects and pas- 
sages of brilliant declamation. But, with the excep- 
tion of Aspasia, a poetic rather than a dramatic crea- 
tion, its characters are uninteresting and even heart- 



BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. 65 

less. Melanthius is not a better stage soldier than 
Pierre in ' Venice Preserved/ Nay, Pierre has public 
wrongs to avenge, while Melanthius' s grief, although 
profound, is selfish. The King is an ordinary despot 
of the Italian novel; and Amintor, who at first offends 
us by his fickleness in love, finally disgusts us by a 
ceremonious and fantastic loyalty, utterly dispropor- 
tioned to the wrong he has undergone. Evadne claims 
about as much sympathy as Milnwood in ' George 
Barnwell/ Her sin is rank ; her repentance is worse. 
The character may have been barely tolerable when 
acted by a boy: performed by women it is unendurable. 
On the other hand, we think Mr. Dyce has under- 
valued ' The Knight of Malta/ " This tragi- comedy," 
he says, "with a rambling plot and very few characters 
which are vigorously delineated, has some highly dra- 
matic and interesting scenes, and a profusion of beau- 
tiful writing." There are in it only nine male and 
three female characters of any prominence — a short 
allowance for our group-loving ancestors. Yet of 
these twelve personages, Miranda, Gomera, and Mont- 
ferrat are clearly defined and opposed; and their 
female correlates, Oriana, Zanthia, and Lucilla, have, 
for our dramatists, unusual variety and precision. We 
are surprised that no manager has thought of reviving 
' The Knight of Malta/ The plot would improve by 
the necessary retrenchments ; modern scenery would 
set on to advantage the Chapter and Procession of 
the Knights at Valetta, and Montferrat be a part not 



66 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

unworthy of Macready himself. We recommend this 
and some of the less popular of Fletcher's plays to the 
attention of Mr. R. H. Home, who has so skilfully 
adapted the ' Honest Man's Fortune ' to the modern 
stage. No art in the poet, nor accomplishment in 
the performers, will again restore f A King and No 
King/ 'Philaster/ or ' The Faithful Shepherdess' to 
the repertoire of acting plays. But in proportion as 
Fletcher departed from the schools of Shakespeare and 
Jonson, he acquired a lower but more natural tone, 
and, with less ambition, was really more successful. 
He was an artist of the second order, constrained to 
unnatural and spasmodical movements while he re- 
mained in the higher regions of art, but moving 
gracefully and spontaneously when he descended to 
the lower. 

We had purposed a few words on the poetry of 
Fletcher apart from the drama, on his metrical system 
which Mr. Darley has somewhat misrepresented, and 
on their relation to the literature of fiction generally. 
But our space is exhausted ; and it only remains for 
us once more to acknowledge our obligations to Mr. 
Dyce for his critical and editorial labours on these 
Dioscuri of the English stage. 



67 



PLAYS AND THEIR PROVIDERS/ 



If the records of the stage speak truth, they are 
among the most melancholy of chronicles, since, ac- 
cording to them, acting is always declining and the 
theatres on the verge of insolvency. It is scarcely 
possible to conceive, if we credit these narratives, how 
any class of mortals can embrace so disastrous a pro- 
fession, or how any man, not being a proven lunatic, 
should of his own accord undergo the drudgery and 
disappointments of managership. From Colley Cib- 
ber to Mr. Alfred Bunn, the annals of the theatre are 
one long Jeremiad of vexations from without and 
from within; so that we are led to think that, in 
comparison with the sceptre of the green-room, the 
treadmill must be a pleasant recreation, and Norfolk 
Island a comfortable retreat. 

Yet doubtless such cares must have their attendant 
consolations; for otherwise it could not be that, "like 
leaves on trees," the generations of actors and ma- 
nagers should succeed one another, and even increase 
* Reprinted from ' Fraser's Magazine,' September 1853. 



DO ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

and multiply, in the regions of perpetual embarrass- 
ment. Who ever yet found an actor willing to quit 
the stage, or, having quitted it, not casting a longing, 
lingering look behind? And even as the stoutest 
protectionists continue to buy and hire land, although 
they affirm that land and loss are become convertible 
terms, so is it common for an actor who has provi- 
dently saved money, as • improvidently to turn ma- 
nager and lose it. We are unable to reconcile these 
contradictions, and are driven to the conclusion that 
the theatrical world, unlike the real world, is com- 
posed of self-devoted persons who immolate them- 
selves on the altars of public entertainment. 

But are the chronicles true ? — is it indeed the fact 
that actors, like certain doomed races of mankind, 
are always degenerating, and that management and 
insolvency are inseparable? May not the premises 
on which these suppositions rest be false ; or, if par- 
tially true, may not the circumstances of decline and 
embarrassment be traced to other than the commonly 
assigned causes ? It appears from a useful little book 
now before us — an attempt at theatrical statistics 
which deserves encouragement* — that during the 
year 1852 no less than twenty-seven theatres and 
saloons opened their doors to the public within the 
boundaries of London, Westminster, and Southwark ; 
and that no fewer than two hundred and twenty thea- 
trical entertainments were produced at them, "for 
* 'Dramatic Kegister' for 1852. 



PLAYS AND THEIR PROVIDERS. 69 

the first time." This account implies, though it does 
not expressly state, that many hundred persons, 
during that period, found it worth their while to de- 
vote their time and their intellects to pursuits which 
the chroniclers of the stage represent as in the last 
degree vexatious and unremunerative. On the other 
hand, and in direct opposition to the said chroniclers, 
the daily and weekly bills of performance vie with 
one another, and exhaust language for superlatives 
expressive of "unbounded success," "rapturous ap- 
plause," and "numbers numberless" of spectators. 
The truth of the matter is indeed, like Samson' s 
riddle, " hard to hit — though one should three days 
musing sit." 

For our parts, we believe neither the prophets who 
prophesy smooth things, nor those who run up and 
down, crying, " Woe, and threefold woe ;" neither that 
acting is always deteriorating, nor that managers are 
for ever on the brink of insolvency. We are however 
persuaded that the one might become more attractive 
by rejecting a good many foolish stage traditions, and 
by a different system of discipline ; and that the others 
increase the risks of a necessarily hazardous specula- 
tion by attempts beyond the power of the stage to 
realize, and by an insane rivalry of one another. We 
will first glance at the difficulties incident to ma- 
nagers. 

These have doubtless been increased by the greater 
number of theatres. We believe that the Act of 



70 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

William IV., 1833, abolishing or considerably modi- 
fying the old limitations of the patent theatres, was a 
measure called for by the exigencies of the case and 
the increasing population of the Metropolis. Yet it 
is in vain to deny that the extended privileges have 
operated, in some respects, unfavourably upon the 
histrionic art. With twenty-seven theatres of more 
or less importance, open nearly at .the same time, it 
has become next to impossible for a manager to col- 
lect, or if collected to keep long together, an efficient 
troupe of performers. The second-rate actor of a 
West-end theatre, especially if he excels in u Hercles' 
vein," is the "magnus Apollo" of a city establish- 
ment, and by merely crossing "the bridges" earns 
golden opinions, and an advanced salary to boot. 
His praises indeed are not sung in the columns of 
the ' Times' or ' Morning Chronicle/ but his pudding 
is sure, and he is probably not nice as to the discri- 
mination of his audiences. But from this it results, 
not only that the lucky emigrant to the east has less 
urgent motives to study the details of his art, and to 
raise himself by just gradations in his profession, but 
also that his duties at a superior theatre devolve, 
through his absence, upon still less competent per- 
formers than himself, and, both by what it loses and 
what it keeps, the general character of the troupe is 
impaired. And even in the case of better performers 
than the one we have supposed, the number of thea- 
tres of a higher order is adverse to the stability of a 



PLAYS AND THEIR PROVIDERS. 71 

company, unless the manager buys his monopoly at a 
heavy pecuniary sacrifice. At the patent theatres the 
same company played for years together, in the winter 
at Covent Garden or Drury Lane, in the summer 
season at the Haymarket, or at most varied their en- 
gagements by "starring it" in the country. They 
thus acquired both a distinctive position in their re- 
spective circles, and a corporate interest in the com- 
pany generally. Each, in short, became a part of a 
well-organized whole. Even to actors of the first 
order this was no inconsiderable advantage. It was 
a kind of regimental discipline, or rather such a 
training as two " elevens" at cricket gain by playing 
customarily on the same ground. To inferior per- 
formers, again, it was a decided benefit to perform 
frequently with the acknowledged masters of their 
art. Whereas under the present system there is no 
such principle of collision; an actor flits from the 
Haymarket to the Adelphi, from the Adelphi to the 
Olympic theatres without attaching himself to any 
one of them. By frequency of change the general 
discipline is slackened; and managers, vexed with 
the uncertainty of their troupes, come to regard their 
scenery and wardrobe as the only permanent forces of 
their establishment. 

Another source of managerial difficulty in collect- 
ing a company arises from the circumstance that pro- 
vincial theatres have nearly ceased to be the nurseries 
of the metropolitan stage. In the provinces, for a 



72 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

theatre to pay the expenses of keeping it open is now 
almost as great a prodigy as if an ox should speak. 
The rural frequenters of the playhouse, whom a few 
hours and a few shillings will convey to the Strand, 
think scorn of the performances that contented their 
simpler and less locomotive sires. Even in Race or 
Assize weeks the Stewards' and Sheriffs' " bespeaks" 
do not half fill the boxes. The country manager con- 
sequently has neither the means nor a motive for 
training or seeking out histrionic talents ; and if his 
company should possess a performer better than or- 
dinary, the world of London is all before him where 
to choose. In the days of the patent theatres he 
would have been a hardy debutant, and most probably 
a luckless one, who had ventured to meet a metro- 
politan audience before he established his provincial 
character at Bath, Norwich, or York. At one or 
other of those cities, and sometimes in all three, he 
served his apprenticeship; at York especially, under 
the well-known Tate Wilkinson, the aspirant was 
sure to receive a sound education in his art, some- 
what roughly administered. Whereas now, under 
the regimen of theatrical free-trade, the city theatres 
have taken the place of the provincial, and the terra 
incognita of Shoreditch or Whitechapel intercepts 
many a recruit who would otherwise have been cleav- 
ing with horrid shout the general ear at Plymouth or 
Southampton. This however is but a poor substitute 
for the more regular discipline of an established pro- 



PLAYS AND THEIR PROVIDERS. 73 

vincial theatre, for although the " legitimate drama " 
(Shakespeare included) is much encouraged by the 
men of the east, as yet no Roscius has " stepped west- 
ward" from those regions, nor indeed is the style of 
acting favoured there likely to recruit more westerly 
theatres with many efficient members. 

Doubtless among the stock-pieces in vogue fifty 
years ago there were many which the present age 
would no longer endure, and which have been most 
rightfully consigned to that valley of dust and dry 
bones, the library of the theatre. Our grandsires 
were contented and even edified by performances 
which we, accustomed to more stimulating species of 
literature, account utterly stale, flat, and unprofitable. 
Another generation may very possibly designate the 
bulk of our present dramatic compositions by even 
harsher names. But let them look to that matter ; 
we are now neither absolving nor condemning. Many 
however of these flat and unprofitable stock-pieces, as 
we now esteem them, are really better adapted to the 
conditions of histrionic art than the broader horrors 
and humours of the present stage. They attempted, 
in the first place, no rivalry with literature — as lite- 
rary productions, indeed, they are for the most part 
below contempt — and by abstaining from such com- 
petition, their authors proved themselves wiser in their 
generation than many of their successors ; for though 
the spheres of the drama and literature may occasion- 
ally touch, they can never coincide without respective 



74 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

forfeiture of their proper natures, In some respects, 
indeed, the literature of the day acts unfavourably 
upon the theatres. 

We can take tea and scandal, or sup full with 
horrors at home, through the medium of our no- 
velists, without exposing ourselves to the disasters of 
heated rooms, narrow benches, crowds, or unjust cab- 
men. But these domestic and untroubled delights 
impose upon authors, actors, and managers a neces- 
sity for providing us, if they would live by their call- 
ings, with something yet more stimulating abroad. 
We Englishmen are often twitted with being an un- 
inventive people ; and assuredly, though we occasion- 
ally produce a startling murder, yet in devising stage 
horrors, or in conceiving intricate yet cunningly 
evolved plots, we come very far behind our neigh- 
bours in France. " To convey" — as the wise call it 
— a drama from Paris, is now, with a few striking ex- 
ceptions, our only practice. We notice it however 
on this occasion, merely to remark upon its relations 
to acting. We admit the frequent excellence of the 
plots so conveyed; yet we are persuaded that they 
both lose considerably by the transfer, and impose 
new burdens on the actors. They lose by the transfer, 
because our ways are not as their ways, our manners 
and morals — be they better or worse is not now the 
question — are not French manners and morals ; and, 
accordingly, the actor can no longer copy from the 
life which he sees, but is constrained to transcribe a 



PLAYS AND THEIR PROVIDERS. 75 

model with which he is unacquainted. Neither is 
our language — so superior in many higher respects — 
adapted to the conversational tone of French comedy j 
and, therefore, in most of the adoptions, while the 
plot remains nearly intact, the lightness and grace of 
the dialogue is, in many cases, sacrificed. As far 
as regards the diction alone, we succeed better with 
the French melodrama. Yet, even in this case, the 
actor is forced into undue exaggeration, in order that 
his impersonation may not sink below the unnatural 
situations or terrors of the scenes. In the older 
farces — those veterans which sufficed our simpler an- 
cestors — the humour was, at least, English; and in 
the older tragedies, the part generally demanded some 
study from the performer. In the modern farce and 
melodrama, the actor has little more to do than to 
accommodate his idiosyncrasy to the part. It would 
be useless for him to study actual life for the purpose 
of representing sentiments or situations that occur 
only in the teeming brains of the writers. 

It would be easy for us to mention the names of 
English writers for the stage to whose productions 
none of these objections will apply, and English 
actors who, in the midst of improbabilities and extra- 
vagances, retain the love of their art, and model them- 
selves upon the realities of life. But our censure, 
such as it is, refers exclusively to the general aspect 
and conditions of the stage at the present moment, to 
the taste which the public at once fosters and imbibes, 

e 2 



76 ESSAYS ON THE DKAMA. 

and to the causes which, in our opinion, render the 
provinces of both managers and actors peculiarly diffi- 
cult and embarrassing. "We refrain therefore equally 
from blame or praise of individuals. The faults we 
note are simply those of the system. 

When Garrick, after much justifiable coyness and 
reluctance on his part, produced, at great expense, 
and, as it proved, with very indifferent success, 
Glover's stupid tragedy of ' Agis/ the chorus were 
robed in surplices, and looked like the choristers of a 
cathedral. Horace Walpole detected the absurdity, 
but in matters of art and costume he stood almost 
alone in his age. Had the play been endurable, the 
surplices would have been deemed orthodox. We 
have passed to the opposite extreme, and represent 
the drama of Elizabeth and Charles with all the 
anxious precision of an archseological society. We 
apply to Shakespeare and his contemporaries the zeal 
for correctness of accessories which our shrewd satirist 
has noted in the collectors of coins : 

" With sharpened sight pale antiquaries pore, 
The inscription value, but the rust adore." 

The passion, the poetry, the plot of ' King John* and 
' Macbeth' will not now fill pit or boxes, unless the 
manager lavishes a fortune on pictures of high Dun- 
sinane, or on coats of mail and kilts such as were 
actually worn by the Earls and Thanes of the English 
and Scottish Courts. We write this with all honour 
to the enterprising manager who has set these dramas 



PLAYS AND THEIR PROVIDERS. 77 

on the stage so gorgeously and accurately accoutred. 
Yet we take leave to doubt whether, by this excess 
of decoration, new difficulties be not imposed on the 
actor; whether, indeed, the substance of the drama 
has not become less important than its accessories. 
In representations of the highest tragedy or comedy, 
the poet himself should, in our opinion, occupy the 
first place; to him the actor is, or should be, wholly 
subservient. Again, the actor, if he be one really 
capable of embodying the highest moods of passion, 
should be independent of the antiquary and robe- 
maker ; and although we would not send the repre- 
sentative of Macbeth back to the modern uniform 
in which Garrick played, we would not regard archae- 
ological precision of garb as an indispensable con- 
dition of success in the character. We do not echo 
the objection which we have frequently heard, that 
the upholsterer is called in to veil the defects of the 
actor; but we would submit that theatrical decora- 
tion has its limits, and that recently there has been a 
tendency to overstep them. The conditions of scenic 
effect are, it appears to us, not difficult to define. 
They are the framework of the picture, not the pic- 
ture itself. So much then of pictorial art — and under 
this head we include costume — as is really needed for 
illustration, is a legitimate adjunct. "We do not think 
that exact copies of the swords, helmets, and mantles 
of any given period are required for proper dramatic 
effects. We do not attach much importance to scenes 



78 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

representing the real localities of the dramatic action. 
It is enough that time and place be not confounded 
by anachronisms. The object of pictorial illustrations 
on the stage, is not so much the historical as the poeti- 
cal element of the drama. We would not, were it pos- 
sible, return to a green-baize curtain, labelled " This 
is a street in Padua/' or " This is the Wood of Ar- 
dennes;" neither would we insist upon a representa- 
tion of the actual street or the actual wood. It is 
sufficient that there be no disharmony; it is enough 
that the adjuncts be as local as the poetry of the 
particular drama. Above all things, an artistic sense 
of the beautiful should preside and predominate over 
scenical representations. 

Decoration, then, has its limits as regards the beau- 
tiful ; it has also its limits as respects the actors. Al- 
though, as we have remarked already, they are sub- 
servient to the poet, they are, on the other hand, of 
primary consequence in relation to the scene. So 
much of the costume or the scenery as calls off atten- 
tion from the actor, is excess ; and if an audience be 
attracted to c Lear' or ' Othello' because in the one 
drama they will find an exact representation of British 
life, and in the other of Venetian magnificence, the 
purpose would be better answered by a panorama. In 
fact, our present managers seem unwittingly hurry- 
ing into an error which both the Athenians and the 
Romans committed in such matters centuries ago. 
At Athens, no expense, latterly, was thought too 



PLAYS AND THEIR PROVIDERS. 79 

great for the service of the theatre. In the midst of 
wars, the public treasury was heavily taxed on behalf 
of the Dionysiac festivals; private fortunes were 
squandered upon the equipment of the choruses; 
gold and ivory and silk were lavished upon the pro- 
scenium, the altar, and the players' dresses. Yet in 
the very same age an act was passed forbidding the 
master- works of the three great Athenian dramatists 
to be acted, and commanding them to be read at the 
Bacchic solemnities. Tragedy was buried under its 
own pomp; money could not supply the dearth of 
befitting actors; the Athenians had not resolution 
enough to check scenic excess, though they had taste 
enough to guard iEschylus and Sophocles from its 
consequences. 

At Rome, where the artistic sensibilities of the 
people were blunt and coarse, for the most part, de- 
coration, as might be expected, more rapidly sur- 
passed its limits, and the drama degenerated into 
pantomime. After Roscius and iEsopus quitted the 
stage, we find no records of either comic or tragic 
actors of eminence. In less than one generation these 
excellent artists were succeeded by Bathyllus and 
Pylades, who, surrounded by crowded groupes and 
dazzling draperies, danced the parts of Hercules and 
Agamemnon to thunders of applause. 

In the days when the drama attempted less and 
succeeded better, elocution was a regular branch of 
an actor's education. It may be so still; but we 



80 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

rarely discover traces of the art of speaking being 
taught, or at least acquired, to any purpose. Except, 
indeed, at the only two theatres where Shakespeare 
is still represented, elocution, for any ends to be an- 
swered, may as well drop into the rank of artes deper- 
ditce. But even at what may be termed our only 
classical theatres, we miss the careful modulation 
of voice and rhythm which we can remember as 
generally prevailing at Covent- Garden under the 
Kemble dynasty. To it has succeeded, where any 
system at all is followed, an inharmonious mode of 
declamation which causes prose to be undistinguish- 
able from verse, and even prose itself to forego its 
proper cadences and proportions. It is called, we 
believe, a more natural manner of speaking. But do 
those who term it so weigh well their own designa- 
tion? When men and women in ordinary life and 
upon ordinary topics speak in harmonious numbers, 
it will be right for the actor to hold the mirror up to 
life, and imitate them. But as men and women do 
not, and never will speak in the melodious cadences 
of heroic verse, the actor has no right to consider 
their common speech as his rule for enunciating the 
lofty and passionate thoughts of ' Hamlet' and ' Mac- 
beth/ His strain is cast in a loftier mood, and, while 
keeping clear from vulgar rant and bombast, should 
be resonant of the harmonies with which he is en- 
trusted. It requires, as it has been well said, a 
man of genius to introduce and make current a po- 



PLAYS AND THEIR PROVIDERS. 81 

pular fallacy. Mr. Macready was unquestionably a 
man of genius,, and as unquestionably, in our judg- 
ment, inoculated his profession with a style of elo- 
cution which sets poetry, music, and nature alike at 
defiance. 

We have been oftentimes puzzled to account for 
the principles upon which this much -admired actor 
founded his theory and practice of enunciation. For 
that it was a theory, however erroneous and perverse, 
must be obvious to all who, like ourselves, remember 
the earlier and better representations of that gentle- 
man. His voice was then full, free, and undisturbed 
by affectation; the sentiments or passions to which 
he gave utterance seemed in those days to spring from 
genuine emotions of his heart; the rhythm of verse 
was distinctly marked ; the cadence and the meaning 
of prose were carefully conveyed. Whereas in his 
latter years he adopted a manner of which the only 
merit was distinctness of utterance. To grace, to veri- 
similitude, or to harmony, it made no pretensions ; 
indeed, it seemed carefully to shun these qualities, as 
so many needless excrescences of declamation. Nor 
was he content with practising his theory himself; 
his brother actors were sedulously trained in the same 
school, and many of them very effectively copied their 
master. Unfortunately, his disciples are yet extant, 
and we must await another generation of actors before 
this heresy of the tongue shall have quite run out its 
sands. 

e 3 



82 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

One of the most disheartening circumstances of the 
modern drama to all parties really interested in its 
conservation as a rational entertainment is, the pre- 
sent fashion for parodies of sterling plays. We know 
not whether the manager, the actor, or the public at 
large be the greater sufferer by this epidemic nuisance. 
Of the authors of such monstrosities we cannot write 
with sufficient contempt : the most successful, and at 
the same time the most hideous of parodists are mon- 
keys ; and we rate no higher the preposterous block- 
heads who convert into mirth and laughter the solemn 
and serious scenes of Shakespeare. To a manager 
who entertains higher notions of his art and position 
than that of a mere snare or trap-fall for audiences, 
they are directly injurious; for, on the one hand, 
they divert from his house the just remuneration of 
his pains and outlay, and on the other, they operate 
as temptations to him to forego his efforts in the right 
path, and to become a mere caterer for one of the 
vulgarest of tastes, a taste for the low and ludicrous. 
The right place for managers who so cater for the 
public is Greenwich Fair. To the actors, again, bur- 
lesque is baneful, inasmuch as it accustoms them to 
regard under a distorted aspect the very highest mat- 
ters of their art. Above all, it is prejudicial to the 
public. Let us imagine for a moment the effect of a 
gallery of caricatures, either in painting or sculpture, 
or rather the indignation which such an affront to the 
national judgment would, it is to be hoped, elicit. 



PLAYS AND THEIR PROVIDERS. 83 

Yet what would be justly resented in the case of the 
other arts, is as unjustly applauded and caressed in 
scenic representations. An Aristophanic sketch, such 
as Mr. Planche or Mr. Tom Taylor provide for the 
Saturnalia of Christmas, is indeed legitimate. It 
shoots folly as it flies, is a lively comment upon 
current absurdities, and frequently speaks wholesome 
truths in the accents of timely jest. But burlesques, 
of which it is the formal purpose to convert into 
laughter what was meant to exalt and purify the soul, 
are offences against public taste and morals equally ; 
and that such offences, instead of being promptly 
silenced, should be applauded and caressed, and that 
Shakespeare should be especially selected as the butt 
of these barren witlings, appears to us one of the most 
decisive symptoms that the Drama, in our generation, 
is really on the decline. 

Our indignation at these foul excrescences of the 
present stage has led us aside from the main ques- 
tion, namely, whether the drama be truly, as we are 
so often assured, in a consumptive condition, and 
whether its revival on any large and liberal scale be 
no longer practicable. We have enumerated sundry 
causes adverse to its general prosperity, — the disper- 
sion of the actors over a wider area ; the partially an- 
tagonistic influences of literature, in supplying some 
of the excitement which, at a time when readers were 
comparatively few, the theatre alone afforded; the 
rash and often unjust rivalry of managers with each 



84 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

other; and the decay of the provincial schools that 
formerly fed the metropolitan stage. Under the pre- 
sent system, we believe these causes of disadvantage to 
be irremediable. But is the present the only practi- 
cable system, and is it indeed too late to devise or 
apply some efficient remedy? Of the three parties 
concerned in the welfare or rehabilitation of the 
drama, one — the actor himself — is nearly powerless, 
and must be put nearly aside. By his very articles 
of agreement, he must do the manager's bidding, and 
to do that bidding effectually, as well for his employer 
as for his own reputation, he must humour the fancies 
of the public. The possible cure of the alleged evils 
therefore rests with the managers and their audiences; 
and we are of opinion that some terms of accommo- 
dation may be discovered for their common and re- 
spective advantage. 

Numerically considered, we do not think that the 
race of play-goers is diminished. This indeed is a sub- 
ject for statistics. Relatively to certain classes, their 
number has undoubtedly declined, since, although we 
comfortably plume ourselves upon possessing the most 
magnificent dramatic poetry in the world, we rather 
inconsistently eschew its representation, and flock 
to entertainments imperfectly understood by two- 
thirds of the spectators. Does any reasonable being 
affect to think that the opera is much more than a 
splendid pantomime to at least half its frequenters, or 
that Rachel and Devrient are verily and indeed ap- 



PLAYS AND THEIR PROVIDERS. 85 

predated by all who applaud them and at the same 
time invidiously contrast them with English actors ? 
To answer these questions affirmatively demands faith 
bigger than a grain of mustard-seed, and more than, 
we confess, we individually own to having. Yet from 
the practice of the Opera House and the St. James's 
Theatre, we discern some hopes of recovery for our 
own. The hours observed by these establishments 
are better adapted to the usages of society ; the per- 
formances are not overloaded by quantity ; the actors 
are not tasked and jaded beyond their strength. Our 
proposal has not indeed novelty to recommend it ; the 
novelty would consist in a fair trial whether a later 
hour for commencing performances, a more strict 
adhesion to separate classes of performance at dif- 
ferent theatres, and, above all, a shorter period of de- 
tention in a heated atmosphere, might not be found 
more attractive to the public and more remunerative 
to the manager. Three hours of recreation may be 
pleasant, or at least may well be endured. By eight 
o'clock in the evening dinner might be comfortably 
concluded, and even the process of digestion as com- 
fortably commenced. By eleven o'clock both eye and 
ear would be satiated with seeing and hearing, and 
some appetite left for a future gratification of those 
senses. The cost and cares of the manager would be 
lessened by twelve hours in each week — no inconsi- 
derable relief, one would think, in the course of a year, 
— while the actor, by such curtailment, would also be 



86 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

less physically wearied, and acquire leisure for a ma- 
turer study and elaboration of his characters. As all 
previous plans, according to the chroniclers of the 
stage, have failed in securing any long course of dra- 
matic prosperity, it would be running no great risk 
to make one experiment more — an experiment which, 
whatever its demerits or disadvantages, would have at 
least this recommendation, that by shortening the 
time it would abridge the sufferings of all the parties 
concerned. 

Dramatic authors, brazened, we suppose, by custom, 
make no scruple, nowadays, of avowing their debts 
to their French originals, and even seem to take a 
certain degree of pride in publishing their importa- 
tions from the opposite shore. We find no fault with 
the practice, provided always that our home-born 
authors are really as impotent as they make them- 
selves out to be, since it is better to borrow than to 
be quite penniless. This however is a matter on 
which they, not we, are the best judges. Meanwhile 
habemus confitentes reos, and live in an age of adap- 
tation. We incline to think however that our actors 
might in some respects, and with general advantage 
to themselves, take a leaf now and then from their 
authors' books, and import a few hints from their 
foreign brethren. From the French comedians they 
might learn that the art of acting is not a mere out- 
line, but a careful filling-up of character ; and from 
the Germans they might copy a conscientious ear- 



PLAYS AND THEIR PROVIDERS. 87 

nestness in presenting their author's sense in appro- 
priate artistic forms. In these respects, more than 
in any actual superiority of gifts, external or internal, 
consist, in our opinion, the real advantages of foreign 
artists above our own. 

We do not however belong to that comfortless race 
of beings whose delight is to travel from Dan to 
Beersheba, and to cry, "All is barren;" neither would 
we invidiously refer to an exotic stage alone for all 
that is excellent in dramatic art, and to our own 
merely to find fault. Could our performers be more 
efficiently concentrated than they are, our managers 
be induced to aim at the discipline of their companies 
rather than at the novelty or variety of their produc- 
tions, and the public be led to regard the stage itself 
as one among the schools of art, we should not de- 
spair of the English Drama becoming once more an 
amusement of the more refined classes of society, even 
as it was when Ministers of State complimented Booth 
from the side-boxes, or the circles at Holland House 
assisted at the performances of Kemble and Mrs. 
Siddons. We have tendered these imperfect sugges- 
tions with an earnest wish that the theatre may one 
day be restored to the position it once occupied among 
the pleasures of refined and instructed persons, instead 
of being, as it now too commonly is, regarded as a 
trivial or a dull employment of an evening. The na- 
tion which boasts of Shakespeare and his great con- 
temporaries, and which produced the family of the 



88 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

Kembles, should continue to boast of its stage. But 
in order to become a subject of legitimate pride, the 
stage itself must retrace many a long and heedless 
step in the path of error, and, by assuming to itself a 
vocation to guide rather than follow the caprices of 
the public, regain the grounds at least of self-respect, 
before it can re-acquire its true position among the 
arts which minister to the instruction as well as to 
the amusement of an age. 



89 



SONGS FROM THE DRAMATISTS. 



The popularization of literature has been accompa- 
nied by evil results as well as good. The number 
of readers has infinitely increased, but the quality 
of literature has almost in equal measure been de- 
teriorated. With a few honourable and striking ex- 
ceptions, few recent authors exhibit any masculine 
strength or idiomatic raciness of language; as few 
books display any depth of learning or originality of 
thought. The people like easy reading, and there is 
a superfoetation of it. We have abundance of pun- 
gent sauces, but little strong meat to eat with them. 
We have a plenteous crop of literary gossip, but the 
garners in which our elder and manlier literature 
is stored are seldom opened. Our great writers are 
talked about, not read. 

Probably this partial oblivion of the classics of our 
language will outlast the present generation. Popular 

* Eeprinted from 'Fraser's Magazine,' November, 1854. 

Songs from the Dramatists. Edited by Eobert Bell. Anno- 
tated Edition of the English Poets. London : John W. Parker and 
Son, 1854. 



90 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

literature must be drunk down to the very lees before 
it will awaken any real weariness of the flesh in its 
readers. The excess of the evil will work its own 
cure; and when the age has been sated with books 
that demand no more attention than is consistent 
with the whirl of a railway or the leisure of a club, 
our descendants may revert to the substantial diet of 
their and our ancestors. We do not despair of a re- 
vival of a taste for Bolingbroke's prose or Spenser's 
verse; although the date of that revival may be as 
remote as the glimpse of power and glory which the 
son of Beor caught from the hills of Moab. The 
fulfilment of the vision was neither soon nor near, 
but it came in the end. 

With these anticipations, we greet with no ordinary 
pleasure the republication of some of our established 
poets in a form accessible to the many, and yet suf- 
ficiently critical for the few. Of cheap and hasty 
reprints we have more than enough — editions so 
slovenly and inaccurate that they would disgrace a 
Californian journeyman working against time, illus- 
trated by notes which add to the previous ignorance 
of the reader the ignorance and blunders of the editor 
also. In such hands, Gibbon becomes inexact, and 
Cowper breaks Priscian's head. Such taskwork would 
be as harmless as it is disreputable, were it not that 
an ill-edited book goes down with the ' ' patient pub- 
lic," and obstructs and discourages honest underta- 
kings of a similar kind. We have sometimes been 



SONGS FROM THE DRAMATISTS. 91 

at the pains to draw up a list of editorial or typo- 
graphical blunders in single volumes of a popular 
series, and we may one day produce it for the benefit 
of the unwary. But we have now a more agreeable 
purpose in view, — that, namely, of directing the at- 
tention of our readers to an edition of the English 
poets which forms a remarkable contrast to the 
" Brummagem ware " so commonly hawked about as 
a genuine article. 

The ' Annotated Edition of the English Poets/ under 
the careful supervision of Mr. Kobert Bell, has now 
reached its tenth volume. We employ the word " care- 
ful " advisedly. Dr. Dibdin, indeed, occasionally spoke 
of " immaculate editions " — a phrase which proved 
that the learned doctor was one of that class of readers 
whom Jeremy Taylor deprecates as "men who read 
after supper/'' We make no such pretensions on Mr. 
Bellas behalf, but we maintain that he well merits the 
designation of a careful editor. For, in the first place, 
he has, on every occasion, reverted to the most reliable 
and authentic text of his authors — whether it be found 
in an early or a late edition. He has expunged the 
errors and amended the caprices of former editions ; 
he has rescued many a passage from the repeated 
blunders of printers, and — no trifling service to all 
parties, the dead as well as the living — has needfully 
adopted a consistent scheme of punctuation. "Of 
our pleasant vices the Gods make whips to scourge 
us," and this is just measure ; but it is not meting 



92 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

justly, to twist a rod out of our merits, and apply it 
to our backs. Yet this is the measure which, from 
some quarters, has been dealt, heaped and running 
over, to the editor of this series of English Poets. 
Mr. BelTs care in punctuation has been alleged as a 
proof of carelessness — the real culprits being the 
editors or printers who left the work of correction to 
be done now at this the eleventh hour. The readings 
which he has deliberately preferred have been adduced 
as examples of his incompetency; the fact being all 
the while that he has in most instances restored to 
his authors the meaning and the phrase which they 
originally wrote. It would be hardly worth while 
noticing the perverse judgments passed .upon his 
critical labours, were it not that the public will not 
sift these points for itself, and thinks — regis ad ex- 
emplar — just as some puny whipster with his pen 
pleases to dictate. Let any one with sound sense, a 
competent acquaintance with the revolutions in our 
language, a tolerable knowledge of early editions, and 
above all, without a previous intention to find or make 
faults, examine Mr. Bellas text of Wyatt, Oldham, 
Dryden, and Cowper, beside the most authentic texts 
of those authors, and we will ensure a verdict in his 
favour, whether it be accompanied or not with a cen- 
sure of the adverse counsel and witnesses. In taking 
his stand upon an approved although not always the 
adopted text of the poets hitherto edited by him, Mr. 
Bell has judiciously availed himself of the practice of 



SONGS FROM THE DRAMATISTS. 93 

the late Robert Southey. Does the reader happen to 
be aware that the version of Cowper's ' Homer ' which 
Southey adopted in his edition of the poet's works, is 
the translation which he made at Olney, and not the 
translation which he revised at Dunham Lodge ; the 
version which he produced when comparatively sane 
in mind and sound in body, and not the version 
which he retouched and enfeebled after his eye had 
grown dim and his malady had permanently esta- 
blished itself? Again, in Southey' s edition of the 
1 Pilgrim's Progress ' we have the ipsissima verba of 
Bunyan' s vision, cleared from the errors of genera- 
tions of printers, and from the interpolations of gene- 
rations of editors. We have even more than this ; 
for in reading the text of Bunyan' s own first edition, 
we read the words of the Dream as they welled fresh 
from his imagination. Bunyan himself, in his own 
later impressions of his work, occasionally used the 
hoe too rashly, and extirpated more than once or 
twice the flowers with the weeds. The wise in such 
matters are now pretty unanimous in thinking that 
both Cowper and Bunyan are under considerable post- 
humous obligations to Dr. Southey ; and if they have 
since met in any habitable planet, both the rhyming 
and the unrhyming poet may have tendered him their 
acknowledgments for the same. We trust that simi- 
lar justice will be rendered to Mr. Bell, not indeed in 
Elysium, but by the present generation. We do not 
grudge him any post-obit applause, but we trust that 



94 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

his merits will be recognized while he is yet able to 
respond to a vote of thanks. 

We gladly turn away from the ungracious task of 
noticing absurd and groundless depreciation. The 
pleasanter office now awaits us of briefly surveying 
the contents of one of the best conceived and most 
agreeable volumes of the present series of English 
Poets. The c Songs from the Dramatists' is a collec- 
tion that would have cheered the soul of Charles 
Lamb, and may stand beside his delightful ' Speci- 
mens of the Dramatic Poets/ It is a book which, had 
it existed fifty years ago, might have spared Dr. Aikin 
the trouble of writing his foolish essay on song- writ- 
ing; a book that would have drawn from Hazlitt 
some genial criticism and many sparkling periods ; a 
book that would have found its place in the library 
at Abbotsford beside the f Border Minstrelsy/ and 
been carried by Shelley in his rambles through the 
pine-forest of Ravenna ; a book for a rainy day, for a 
summer noon, for an evening at yule-tide, for inter- 
vals of business, for any time and season. Perhaps the 
title hardly expresses the full import of this little 
volume's contents. The term Song, as commonly 
accepted, is not sufficiently indicative of its lyrical 
wealth. The incantation scene from ' Macbeth/ the 
solemn dirges of our old playwrights, the lyric por- 
tions of the ' Faithful Shepherdess/ can scarcely be 
included in that category. It is seldom that a title- 
page professes too little ; and Mr. Bell's is certainly 



SONGS PROM THE DRAMATISTS. 95 

not among those censured by Democritns Junior, as 
"Conceited in its inscription, and able (as Pliny 
quotes out of Seneca) to make him loyter by the way 
that went in haste to fetch a midwife for his daugh- 
ter." Neither is it such a frontispiece as Milton 
deemed attractive to ' ' the stall-reader." We are not 
prepared on the instant with a better prefix, and 
"good wine needs no bush." Yet perhaps it were 
more germane to the matter to have entitled the 
book, ' Songs, Grave and Gay, from the Dramatists/ 

Why has Milton been denied his rightful privilege 
of contributing his symbolon to this feast of lyrical 
delicacies? The editor has most properly culled 
more than one garland from Ben Jonson's Masques, 
and from a poem from which Milton did not disdain 
to borrow — Fletcher's l Faithful Shepherdess/ " Cur 
a convivantibus exulat philosophia ?" — wherefore does 
not the name of i Comus ' appear in the table of con- 
tents ? It cannot have been negligence in the editor. 
'Comus' was not indeed like Jonson's Masques, "pre- 
sented at Court," yet it was enacted at Ludlow Castle. 
Surely in a second edition this defect will be amended, 
and Milton's Masque be allowed the privilege of post- 
liminium. 

The c Songs from the Dramatists/ like the dramas 
in which they are imbedded, may be properly divided 
into three periods : 1, Those which preceded Shake- 
speare; 2, The songs of Shakespeare, and, longo in- 
tervallo, those of his immediate contemporaries ; and 



96 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

3, Those which were produced after the great dra- 
matic era had closed. The lyrical productions of the 
first of these periods exhibit, like its drama, a spas- 
modic strength and an irregular sweetness, "native 
wood-notes wild," springing frequent out of the bosom 
of dissonance. The language, indeed, was in too tran- 
sitional a condition to admit of the perfect elaboration 
which song- writing demands. Potent masters in the 
art of rhyme as were Chaucer and Spenser, and skil- 
ful and sweet as Surrey and Wyatt approved them- 
selves to be, the chords they struck, if not always of 
a higher mood than song requires, were too generally 
elaborate and full for the seeming spontaneity of feel- 
ing that most aptly weds itself to music. These early 
songs savour of village mirth, of the pipe and tabor, 
and the accompaniment of rustical feet. Their music 
does not float upon the air; their gushes of sweet 
sound do not imprison the senses ; they do not cling 
to our memories ; they could not be sung by tricksy 
spirits, hardly by very tuneful mortals : in portions 
beautiful exceedingly, as wholes they are seldom pleas- 
ing. The most finished of them — such as " Cupid and 
Campaspe played " — savour rather of Bion and Mos- 
chus and the Greek Anthology, than of sterling En- 
glish melody. Fully assenting to Mr. Bell's admira- 
tion of this song of Lyly the Euphuist, we prefer for 
its easy measure and joyous cadence the duet (if we 
may venture on so modern a phrase) between Paris 
and iEnone, in Peele's c Arraignment of Paris/ 



SONGS FROM THE DRAMATISTS. 97 

" Mn. Fair and fair, and twice so fair, 
As fair as any may be ; 
The fairest shepherd on our green, 
A love for any lady. 
Par. Fair and fair, and twice so fair, 
As fair as any may be : 
Thy love is fair for thee alone, 
And for no other lady. 
Mn. My love is fair, my love is gay, 

As fresh as bin the flowers in May, 
And of my love my roundelay, 
My merry, merry, merry roundelay, 

Concludes with Cupid's curse, 
They that do change old love for new, 
Pray gods, they change for worse ! 
Ambo, simul. They that do change, etc. 
Mn. Fair and fair, etc. 
Par. Fair and fair, etc. 
Mn. My love can pipe, my love can sing, 
My love can many a pretty thing, 
And of his lovely praises ring 
My merry, merry roundelays, 

Amen to Cupid's curse, 
They that do change, etc." 

That the poets of this period included in the term 
"song" poems which can hardly have been accom- 
panied by music, appears from the following verses 
of the same author. It would tax the art of Sir 
Henry Bishop himself to adapt them to either wind 
or stringed instrument. Probably their only accom- 
paniment was an occasional note of the rebeck or 

cittern. 

"The Aged Man-at-Arms. 

" His golden locks time hath to silver turned ; 
O time too swift, O swiftness never ceasing ! 

F 



DO ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

His youth 'gainst time and age hath ever spurned, 

But spurned in vain ; youth waneth by encreasing. 
Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers but fading seen : 
Duty, faith, love, are roots, and ever green. 

" His helmet now shall make a hive for bees, 
And lovers' songs be turned to holy psalms ; 

A man-at-arms must now serve on his knees, 
And feed on prayers, which are old age's alms : 

But though from court to cottage he depart, 

His saint is sure of his unspotted heart. 

" And when he saddest sits in homely cell, 

He '11 teach his swains this carol for a song : 
' Blessed be the hearts that wish my Sovereign well, 

Cursed be the souls that think her any wrong.' 
G-oddess, allow this aged man his right, 
To be your beadsman now that was your knight." 

The song- writers of this period were deeply imbued 
with at least the images and allusions derived from 
the Roman Poets. Apollo and Syrinx, Daphne and 
Pan, Cupid and Endymion are used by them as fami- 
liarly as by those intolerably tedious personages, the 
composers of pastorals and madrigals for the Court of 
Versailles. In the time of Peele, Heywood, and Lyly, 
these mythological beings were not, however, merely 
vapid abstractions, the counterparts of the be-wigged 
lords and be-painted ladies who delighted in making 
or pretending to make love after the manner of the 
ancients. In the sixteenth century literature retained 
its freshness ; the most excellent books were written 
in the language of ancient Greece or Rome ; the 
mirrors and the models of lyrical composition were 



SONGS FROM THE DRAMATISTS. 99 

imported from semi-pagan Italy. Tedious as they 
now appear to us, these graceful incarnations of hea- 
then sentiment were suggestive and impressive to our 
forefathers. 

The simple dramatic agencies available and em- 
ployed in our elder theatre, imposed upon the song- 
writer of the time heavier duties than those which 
devolve upon his modern representative. The ina- 
nities of a song were not then concealed by the crash 
of an orchestra : the pipe, viol, and theorbo left the 
poet's words audible; an indifferent ballad was not 
rescued from the pit by the charms or the skill of 
popular bass or sopranos. A song was often a very 
serious matter, recommending itself to the general 
ear and heart by pregnant saws and ethical maxims. 
Samuel Daniel's poem — we can scarcely imagine it 
set to music — entitled f The Influence of Opinion/ 
reads like a passage from Seneca " done into metre ; " 
nor was Daniel more gloomy and sententious than 
the satirical and acrimonious Nash, meditating ' ( on 
graves, and worms, and epitaphs," in the following 
lines, entitled — 

" Appkoaching- Death. 

" Adieu ; farewell earth's bliss, 
This world uncertain is : 
Eond are life's lustful joys, 
Death proves them all but toys. 
None from his darts can fly : 
I am sick, I must die. 

Lord have mercv on us ! 



100 



ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 



" Eich men, trust not in wealth ; 
Gold cannot buy you health ; 
Physic himself must fade ; 
All things to end are made ; 
The plague full swift goes by : 
I am sick, I must die. 

Lord have mercy on us ! 

" Beauty is but a flower, 
Which wrinkles will devour : 
Brightness falls from the air ; 
Queens have died young and fair ; 
Dust hath closed Helen's eye ; 
I am sick, I must die. 

Lord have mercy on us ! 

" Strength stoops unto the grave : 
Worms feed on Hector brave. 
Swords may not fight with fate : 
Earth still holds ope her gate. 
Come, come, the hells do cry ; 
I am sick, I must die. 

Lord have mercy on us ! 

" Wit with his wantonness, 
Tasteth death's bitterness. 
Hell's executioner 
Hath no ears for to hear 
What vain art can reply ; 
I am sick, I must die. 

Lord have mercy on us ! 



Haste therefore each degree 
To welcome destiny : 
Heaven is our heritage, 
Earth but a player's stage. 
Mount we unto the sky ; 
I am sick, I must die. 

Lord have mercy on us !' 



SONGS FROM THE DRAMATISTS. 101 

We have dwelt the longer upon these earlier sam- 
ples of English song-writing, partly because they 
show the latitude which our ancestors accorded to 
this species of composition, and partly because they 
exhibit the full Pallas-like completeness with which 
the art of song-writing sprang from the imagination, 
or rather from the heart, of Shakespeare. But before 
we enter upon the second and most brilliant period 
of the lyrical accompaniment of the English drama, 
we must take a rapid glance at some of Mr. Bell's 
biographical notices of the poets themselves. The 
employments and conditions of the authors will fur- 
nish us with some clue to the quality and character 
of their productions. 

When Macklin was asked why he forsook the stage, 
for which he had some genius, and took up lecturing 
on history and science, for which he assuredly had 
none, he replied that the latter was the more gentle- 
manly occupation. It would seem that writing of 
songs was accounted of yore a gentlemanly occupation 
also. For although the majority of writers who have 
been laid under contribution by Mr. Bell were play- 
wrights proper, yet we find among them a fair sprink- 
ling of poets who had other means of putting money 
in their purses. The very first name that leads off 
the dance is that of Nicholas Udall, who, descended 
from Peter Lord Uvedale and Nicholas Udall, Con- 
stable of Winchester Castle in the reign of Edward 
III., was himself head-master of Eton, and previously 
a scholar in high repute of Corpus Christi College, 



102 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

Oxford. Nicholas, however, was more clever than 
clean-handed. At Eton he was the plagosus Orbilius 
of the sixth form; and dismissed from his master- 
ship for stealing spoons. He seems, indeed, to have 
regained his character, since he died head-master of 
Westminster College, besides holding a fair share of 
Church preferment, — " a stall at Windsor, and the 
living of Calborne, in the Isle of Wight." Nicholas 
owed something to his gifts as a dramatic writer, and 
his skill in composing dialogues and interludes to be 
performed at Court. Yet these talents alone would 
hardly have helped him out of the spoon scrape, had 
he not been a shrewd controversialist on the winning 
side. His advocacy of the doctrines of Protestantism 
in King Edward's reign, cast a veil over his delin- 
quencies. How he escaped scorching in Queen Mary's 
reign we are not told. 

In John Still we have another instance of clerical 
melody. Of his history, says Mr. Bell, "little is 
known beyond the incidents of his preferments in the 
Church." And he seems to have merited advance- 
ment; for Sir John Harrington, Queen Elizabeth's 
godson, speaks of him as of a man to whom he never 
came but he grew more religious, and from whom he 
never went but he parted more instructed. We 
have not room for the list of his preferments ; be it 
remembered, however, that he died Bishop of Bath 
and Wells, and wrote one of the most genial incen- 
tives to deep potations in the language, — 

"Back and side go bare, go bare; " 



SONGS FROM THE DRAMATISTS. 103 

even now chanted on fitting occasions at Cambridge 
supper-parties. Again in Dr. Jasper Mayne we have 
an example of the diversity of gifts, if not of the same 
spirit; for he was at once a distinguished preacher 
and a dramatic author. From the sample of his wit 
as it appears in his comedy of ' The City Match/ we 
are not indeed inclined to estimate it highly. Yet of 
his being a practical humorist there can be no doubt, 
if the following anecdote of him be true. The Doctor 
had an old servant, to whom he bequeathed a trunk, 
which he told him contained something that would 
make him drink after his death. When, on the Doc- 
tor's demise, the box was opened, it was found to con- 
tain a red-herring ! This is a livelier jesfr than any 
to be found in his comedy ; but perhaps he reserved 
a richer vein of humour for the pulpit, and punned 
and quibbled like the facetious Dr. South. In look- 
ing over Mr. Bell's biographical introductions to his 
' Book of Songs/ we have been much struck with the 
liberal quota of authors supplied to the theatre by 
our Universities, and by Cambridge especially. As 
yet the study of the severer sciences had not frozen 
the genial current of the lyric Muse. We suspect, 
however, that although Heywood, Peele, Nash, and 
others were dignified with the addition of M.A. to 
their names, they were such scions as the University 
not unwillingly saw grafted upon other stocks, and 
that Alma Mater rejoiced when these her fast sons 
betook themselves to the more congenial sphere of a 



104 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

London playhouse. It is indeed curious to contrast 
the roving and extravagant lives of these jovial blades 
with the picture of college life drawn by old Latimer, 
who preceded them by one generation only. It is 
difficult to conceive that the shivering and half- 
starved scholars who ran up and down the cloisters 
to warm themselves, and supped on thin mutton-broth, 
can ever have burgeoned forth into writers of mirth- 
ful roundelays. 

We are almost inclined to pass over the ' Songs of 
Shakespeare ' with a simple reference to their abso- 
lute royalty of perfection, both a parte ante and a 
parte post, — both as regards all compositions of this 
order which preceded them, and all which followed 
them. It is superfluous to commend the violet for its 
perfume, the sweet South for the odours it breathes, 
the lilies of the field for their purity, or the voice of 
the nightingale for its sweetness. They are as much 
better than the songs of Burns, as the songs of Burns 
are better than those of Moore. The secret of their 
structure is beyond alchemy. We can divide a ray 
of light, and dive to the fountains of colour, and trace 
the flower from its seed, and map the stars, and re- 
duce the diamond to its elements, and apply the laws 
of harmony to the songs of birds. But we do not 
know the secret of Shakespeare's supremacy in song- 
writing, — 

" Nil majus generatur ipso, 
~Nec viget quidquam simile aut secundum." 



SONGS FROM THE DRAMATISTS. 105 

Shelley was wont to say that the poetry of Dante 
filled him with despair : and beside Shakespeare's 
songs all others appear to disadvantage. " The words 
of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo." In 
this kind of writing, as in every other, Shakespeare 
had an instinctive knowledge of the ' ' great arcanum." 
His was at once "the art that adds to nature" and 
"the art that nature makes." With other song- 
writers some proper and personal characteristic may 
be discerned ; the individuality peeps through the 
sentiments or the words ; it is the outward and visible 
sign of the inward and spiritual life of the writer. In 
Beaumont and Fletcher we find variety, grace, and 
sweetness ; in Jonson, a sturdy purpose and a learned 
taste, wringing, as it were, beauty and melody from 
book-lore ; in Middleton, a luxuriant fancy ; in Web- 
ster, uncontrolled passion and earnest eloquence. In 
Shakespeare alone we meet with all these qualities 
combined — passion and tenderness, gaiety and grace, 
the subtlest wit, the most natural wood -notes, the 
most rare combinations, and full-throated ease. Nor 
is the variety of his songs less admirable than their 
excellence, or their dramatic propriety less wonderful 
than their variety. He has married to music the 
grief and the joy, the aspirations and the circum- 
stances of all sorts and conditions of men. In them 
find fitting utterance the lover, the student, the clown, 
the courtier, the high-born beauty, the country mal- 
kin, the warrior arming for the fight, the grave-digger 

f 3 



106 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

making the house that lasts till doomsday, royalty on 
its funeral conch, the tricksy spirits of the air, the 
train of the faery king, the foul earthworm Caliban, 
the ancient gods of Olympus, the chant of wizards, 
and the dirge of death. 

The step from Shakespeare to his contemporaries, 
great and manifold as were their poetical excellencies, 
is like the passage of Christian from the Delectable 
Mountains to the lower valley, with its bright ver- 
dure, its narrow causeway, and its frequent pit-falls. 
We have stepped from the Eden of song into a lower 
region, often "beautiful exceedingly," yet not un- 
vexed by storms nor exempt from change. It is re- 
markable that Jonson, whose genius, from its general 
characteristics, appears to have been ill-adapted to 
the delicate task of song- writing, should yet have 
produced so many melodious and graceful productions 
of this order. As in his plays, so in his lyrical effu- 
sions, Jonson wrought by line and rule. His mind 
was as richly stored as Milton's with the lore of 
Greece and Rome. He merited even in a higher de- 
gree than Beaumont the appellation of "judicious." 
But he possessed little or no spontaneity. He built 
up his songs as he constructed his dramas — line upon 
line, and phrase upon phrase. He was, like Gray, a 
consummate artist in the mosaic of poetry. Yet it is 
unjust to accuse Jonson of pedantry. Books were to 
him a substantial life ; he thought through them, he 
saw with them; they were to him in the place of 



SONGS FROM THE DRAMATISTS. 107 

heart and imagination. But he availed himself of 
their aid in no servile spirit j and though he borrowed 
largely, he mostly repaid his loans with liberal in- 
terest. In the songs of Jonson, Mr. Bell judiciously 
remarks : — 

"We have great command of resources, and a 
visible air of preparation. The lines are thoughtful, 
and occasionally rugged, and must be read, even in 
the singing, with a certain degree of emphasis and 
deliberation. They do not spring at once to the heart 
and fancy. The spirit of the Greek Anthology is in 
them, and is felt either in the allusions, the phrase, 
the subject, or the diction. If they do not recall the 
ravishing music of the lark or the nightingale, they 
hold us in the spell of some fine instrument whose 
rich notes are delivered with the skill of a master." 

Jonson' s masques, songs, and pastoral scenes have 
suffered from unmerited neglect. It has been too 
hastily assumed that his forte lay in the delineation 
of humorous or, more properly, of eccentric character. 
But " out of the eater came forth meat, and out of 
the strong, sweetness ; " and " rare Ben Jonson " oc- 
casionally relaxed his iron sinews, and welded on his 
anvil a network of verse as fine and enthralling as the 
web in which Hephaistos caught Aphrodite and Ares. 
We take for granted that his songs ' Come, my Celia, 
let us prove/ and ' Still to be neat, still to be drest/ 
are familiar to the reader. The two following have 
less frequently found their way into extracts from the 



108 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

English poets. This reads like a fragment of Stesi- 
chorus imbedded in one of Plato's dialogues. 

" So beauty on the waters stood, 
When love had severed earth from flood ; 
So when he parted air from fire, 
He did with concord all inspire ; 
And there a matter he then taught 
That elder than himself was thought ; 
Which thought was yet the child of earth, 
For Love is older than his birth." 

'Echo mourning the death of Narcissus/ is con- 
ceived in the spirit of the tender and melancholy 
Simonides. 

" Slow, slow, fresh fount, keep time with my salt tears ; 
Yet slower, yet, O faintly gentle springs : 
List to the heavy part the music bears, 

Woe weeps out her division when she sings. 
Droop, herbs and flowers j 
Fall, grief, in showers ; 
Our beauties are not ours ; 
Oh, I could still, 
Like melting snow upon some craggy hill, 

Drop, drop, drop, drop, 
Since nature's pride is, now, a withered daffodil." 

In the following song, entitled ( Love and Death/ 
which occurs in his fine dramatic pastoral ' The Sad 
Shepherd/ — a poem of which Mr. Bell remarks, that 
' ' it abounds in passages of exquisite beauty, and dis- 
plays his mastery over a species of poetry in which 
he is least appreciated/' — the learned allusions are 
singularly at variance with the condition of the song- 
stress, yet there is a grace even in its discrepancy : — 



SONGS FROM THE DRAMATISTS. 109 

" Though I am young and cannot tell 
Either what death or love is, well, 
Yet I have heard they both bear darts, 
And both do aim at human hearts ; 
And then again, I have been told, 
Love wounds with heat, as death with cold ; 
So that I fear they do but bring 
Extremes to touch, and mean one thing. 

" As in a ruin we it call, 
One thing to be blown up, or fall ; 
Or to our end, like way may have, 
By a flash of lightning or a wave : 
So love's inflamed shaft or brand, 
May kill as soon as death's cold hand ; 
Except love's fires the virtue have 
To fright the frost out of the grave." 

Beaumont and Fletcher's songs " occupy a middle 
region between Shakespeare's and Jonson's." What- 
ever " Beaumont's judgment " may have been, we are 
inclined to ascribe to his copartner in dramatic com- 
position the principal share in the writing of their 
songs. Fletcher's ear for metrical melody was of 
the finest order, and the music of his verse has often 
recommended his dramas to the closet, when they 
have been feeble and ineffectual on the stage. We do 
not, indeed, pretend to trace in their joint produc- 
tions the marks of either individual hand. We have 
not much respect for the tradition — and it is nothing 
more- than tradition — that Beaumont contributed the 
controlling judgment, and Fletcher the abundant 
fancy and the exuberant wit. But Fletcher, although 
the elder of the twain, survived Beaumont many 



110 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

years, and is the undoubted author of many plays 
over which his associate exercised no superintendence ; 
and in these very plays occur for the most part the 
most finished and delicate proofs of the lyrical genius 
of the surviving poet. There is also in Fletcher's 
songs a genial and hearty element of mirth, which 
makes us regret that in his dramas he should so often 
have curbed his humorous vein, and preferred bril- 
liant but hard scintillations of wit. In this latter 
respect, indeed, Fletcher was the dramatical parent of 
Congreve, and introduced the evil habit of putting 
into the mouth of his clowns, repartees only proper 
to his " curled darlings " and courtiers. " Tell me if 
Congreve' s fools be fools indeed," is a censure equally 
applicable to the comic personages of Fletcher. His 
rustics are fine gentlemen in smock-frocks ; his beg- 
gars might graduate in the Academy of Compliments, 
and walk gowned with " Biron, Longueville, and Du- 
main." 

Of Fletcher's power for representing genial mirth, 
the following song from the ' Spanish Curate' affords 
a proof; as the drama itself from which the song is 
taken evinces that Fletcher went astray in preferring 
sparkling wit to the natural humour which he kept 
under restraint. 



: Let the bells ring, and let the boys sing, 

The young lasses skip and play ; 
Let the cups go round, till round goes the ground 

Our learned old vicar will stay. 



SONGS FROM THE DRAMATISTS. Jll 

" Let the pig turn merrily, merrily, ah ! 
And let the fat goose swim ; 
For verily, verily, verily, ah ! 

Our vicar this day shall be trim. 

" The stewed cock shall crow, cock-a-loodle-loo, 
A loud cock-a-loodle shall he crow ; 
The duck and the drake shall swim in a lake 
Of onions and claret below. 

" Our wives shall be neat, to bring in our meat 
To thee our most noble adviser ; 
Our pains shall be great, and bottles shall sweat, 
And we ourselves will be wiser. 

" We '11 labour and swink, we '11 kiss and we '11 drink, 
And tithes shall come thicker and thicker ; 
We '11 fall to our plough, and get children enow, 
And thou shalt be learned old vicar." 

This roundelay exhibits a singular contrast to the 
quaint and tender fancy of a love-song from the same 
drama. 

" Dearest, do not delay me, 

Since, thou knowest, I must be gone ; 
Wind and tide, 't is thought, doth stay me, 
But 't is wind that must be blown 
From that breath whose native smell 
Indian odours far excel. 

" Oh, then speak, thou fairest fair ! 

Kill not him that vows to serve thee ; 
But perfume this neighbouring air, 

Else dull silence, sure, will starve me : 
'T is a word that 's quickly spoken, 
Which, being restrained, a heart is broken." 

We pass over Aspasia's song in the ( Maid's Tra- 
gedy/ since that play is among the best-known, al- 



112 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

though by no means, in our judgment, among the 
happier efforts of Fletcher's muse : the following song 
from the 'Elder Brother' may be less familiar, and 
its gracefulness at least atone for its repetition. 

" Beauty clear and fair, 
Where the air 
Rather like a perfume dwells ; 
Where the violet and the rose 
Their blue yeins in blush disclose, 
And seem to honour nothing else 

" Where to live near, 

And planted there, 

Is to live, and still live new ; 

Where to gain a favour is 

More than light, perpetual bliss, — 

Make me live by serving you. 

" Dear, again back recall 
To this light, 
A stranger to himself and all ; 
Both the wonder and the story 
Shall be yours, and eke the glory ; 
I am your servant, and your thrall." 

With one more extract from Fletcher's ' Beggar's 
Bush' — a comedy which justly commanded a high 
panegyric from Coleridge — we must pass on to some 
of the other song-writers of the seventeenth century. 
The jollity of beggars in the olden time may, like the 
epithet " merrie" applied to England generally, be a 
coinage of the brain; but assuredly our dramatists 
seem to have thought that your beggars' weeds were 
the only wear, and that there was no life like the life 



SONGS FROM THE DRAMATISTS. 113 

on the hillside. Nor does this fancy argue altogether 
a truant disposition; for the poets of those days were 
mostly a dependent race, and climbed the stairs and 
ate the bitter bread of great men's houses. Fletcher, 
from his dwelling on the Bank side ; Jonson, from his 
chambers "in the alley; " Massinger, humiliated, ob- 
scure, and poor, may well have sighed for the freedom 
from solicitation and ceremony enjoyed by the dwellers 
in barns and gipsy-tents. 

" Cast our caps and cares away : 
This is beggars' holiday ! 
At the crowning of our king, 
Thus we ever dance and sing. 
In the world look out and see, 
Where's so happy a prince as he? 
Where the nation lives so free, 
And so merry as do we ? 
Be it peace, or be it war, 
Here at liberty we are, 
And enjoy our ease and rest : 
To the field we are not pressed ; 
Nor are called into the town, 
To be troubled with the gown. 
Hang all offices, we cry, 
And the magistrate too, by ! 
When the subsidy's increased, 
We are not a penny sessed ; 
Nor will any go to law 
With the beggar for a straw. 
All which happiness, he brags, 
He doth owe unto his rags." 

We have given a very imperfect specimen of the 
lyrical productions of our great dramatic age; but 
sufficient samples will have been afforded, if we have 



114 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

induced our readers to turn to the originals in Mr. 
Bell's volume. The era of the Restoration was nearly 
as unfavourable to the art of song- writing as it was to 
the drama generally. When Comus and his crew 
were both the minstrels and the audience, a decline, 
if not indeed utter corruption, was inevitable in a 
species of composition which, to be noble or winning, 
must shun the borders and the region of sensuous 
and sinful fantasy. The better songs, indeed, of the 
age of Charles II. are not to be found in the play- 
books. The Dorsets, Buckhursts, and Sucklings, 
wrote amorous ditties of some merit, and naval songs 
that were still better. But, as regards the drama, 
love and noble sentiments disappear with the reopen- 
ing of the theatres, and sensuality takes their place. 
In order to render the c Tempest' palatable to an 
audience, Dryden inserted into its ethereal visions a 
sexual underplot ; and made lawless love, in place of 
stirring adventure and Roman stateliness and chi- 
valry, the prominent characteristic of ' Antony and 
Cleopatra.' The pure lyrical Muse, when not bol- 
stered up by the pomp and obscurity of Cowley, was, 
like the Lady in ' Comus/ environed by a bestial herd, 
and imprisoned in a magic chair. Voluptuous, and 
without taste or sentiment, the songs of that scanda- 
lous period reflect the garish daylight of town-life; 
they echo the sentiments of Whitehall, and record 
the intrigues of the Broad Walk in the Mall. The 
Strephons and Chloes assumed the garb of Arcadia, 



SONGS FROM THE DRAMATISTS. 115 

and employed the language of the bagnio in their 
Amoebean dialogues. The worst portions of Theocri- 
tus, Virgil, and the Italian pastorals were selected as 
the types of rural innocence; and the grossness of 
these ideal pictures was enhanced by the liberal adop- 
tion of the diction and manners of the masques of 
Versailles. "Music and sweet poetry agree;" and 
by a fitting retribution, music, wedded to the lays of 
the Courtalls and Loveits, degenerated with the poetry 
which it accompanied. Even Dryden "wrote with 
his left hand" when he attempted the composition of 
song, masque, or pastoral. 

The transition from the unfettered grace of the 
earlier songs to the more regular measures of later 
days, is, we think, first observable in Dryden. The 
following stanzas, if we except a certain halting of 
the rhythm, might have been produced a century 
later : — 

" From the low palace of old father Ocean, 
Come we in pity our cares to deplore ; 
Sea-racing dolphins are trained for our motion, 
Moony tides swelling to roll us ashore. 

" Every nymph of the flood, her tresses rending, 
Throws off her armlet of pearl in the main ; 
Neptune in anguish his charge unattending, 
Vessels are foundering, and vows are in vain." 

And the song of Diana might be sung after a ' ' Dar- 
lington meet." 

" With horns and with hounds, I waken the day, 
And hie to the woodland- walks away ; 



116 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

I tuck up my robe, and am buskined soon, 

And tie to my forehead a waxing moon. 

I course the fleet stag, unkennel the fox, 

And chase the wild goats o'er summits of rocks ; 

With shouting and hooting we pierce through the sky, 

And Echo turns hunter, and doubles the cry." 

Congreve's songs, as might be expected from the 
wit of his plays, are witty and epigrammatic : but, 
like his plays, they are infected with the coarseness 
of feelings and the shallowness of principle which pre- 
vailed with more or less intensity so long as the lite- 
rature of the Restoration retained its hold on the na- 
tional mind. Indeed, our lyrical and dramatical poets 
cannot be said to have entirely escaped from the evil 
influences of the Stuart Court earlier than the middle 
of the last century. The lash of Pope and the fine 
irony of Addison were not implements keen enough 
to extirpate the disease. It lingered on the stage and 
contaminated song- writing as late as the time of 
Cumberland and the younger Colman. 

Richard Brinsley Sheridan, with whom the series 
of dramatic songsters closes, was, acccording to Mi- 
chael Kelly, one of those men who, though unable to 
sing two bars of any tune correctly, have yet music 
in their souls. He would, in rude fashion, with many 
exorbitancies of tone and time, give composers of 
music a conception of effects to be produced by voice 
or instrument, which they adopted and thanked him 
for. He brings up the rear-guard on the present 
occasion with great force and spirit, and revives atten- 



SONGS FROM THE DRAMATISTS. 117 

tion just as it had begun to flag beneath the some- 
what soporific madrigals of D'Urfey, Congreve, and 
Farquhar. The songs in his opera of the l Duenna' are 
as superior to the productions of the century before, 
as they are inferior to those of the Elizabethan age. 
They have the sharpness and the grace of a fine in- 
taglio : Ovid might have been proud of them : they 
have as much tenderness as the best portions of his 
* Amores/ and the tour de malice of his epigrammatic 
couplets. If Sheridan had turned his attention to the 
writing of lyrical dramas, Gay would have had a for- 
midable rival for his ' Beggar's Opera/ 

In some genial moment, when not too full of the 
grape, and not more than usually vexed by duns and 
bailiffs, our incomparable Brinsley penned his famous 
song, beginning, — 

" Oh, the days when I was young," 

not perhaps without some compunction for his own 
grizzled hairs and declining powers of enjoyment. It 
professes a comfortable philosophy, although not of 
the more rigid school. If glees be sung in Hades, 
we can fancy Anacreon, Propertius, and Walter de 
Mapes joining in the chorus. 

We cannot dismiss this excellent collection of 
1 Songs from the Dramatists' with a merely critical 
farewell. Its contents are suggestive of higher and 
better thoughts than go to the summation of merits 
or demerits. We would look beyond the words and 
measures to the writers of these songs and dirges — 



118 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

these slight yet expressive records of many genera- 
tions of passion and gaiety, sentiment and fancy, ten- 
der and imaginative ontponrings of many moods and 
minds. A book is no dead congeries of paper and ink 
and pasteboard : it is a casket rather of the quintes- 
sential and spiritual life of men and generations. It 
tells more impressively than storied urn or measured 
epitaph, of the griefs which have been borne, the joys 
that have been shared, the hopes that have been che- 
rished, the dreams that have been trusted by the my- 
riads whose numbers surpass those of the living. For 
these songs are doubly representative, first of their 
individual authors, and secondly of the generations in 
which they lived. So thought the men of yore, so 
felt, so rejoiced they in their allotted span of tribula- 
tion and gladness, of youthful love, of sobered antici- 
pations. How many weary and watchful hours, how 
many genial and jubilant moments are reflected from 
the pages of this little book ! Herein, to all who have 
ears to hear, are echoes of the woodland and the soli- 
tary chamber, of the hubbub of the market, of the 
lonely shore, of the song springing from the heart of 
the young, of the pensiveness that grows with the 
shadow of years past their noon. 

As we turn over these pages, we pass from expres- 
sions of mere sensuous enjoyment, from the mirth 
wherein there is melancholy, from the vanity of youth 
and the delirium of pleasure, from the unsubstantial 
delights of wine, and music, and flowers, to the 



SONGS FROM THE DRAMATISTS. 119 

thoughts which dally with death and the worm; 
from the pomp and revelry of the banquet -hall, to the 
mould and votive chaplets of the grave ; ' ' from ceiled 
roofs, to arched coffins;" from that "Old England" 
which lay within the limits of the four seas, to this 
present England, which spreads its arms eastward and 
westward, and sends forth its sons as rulers of the 
most ancient of kingdoms, or as conquerors of the 
unreclaimed waste. The thoughts and the music of 
these songs are a common inheritance to him that 
from a crest of the Himalaya surveys the fountains of 
the Ganges, and to him that from the Canadian hills 
looks northward to the palace of eternal winter. 
Therefore would we send forth this little volume with 
the benison of "good speed," for it may convey to 
regions untrodden by them the brave language of our 
fathers ; and that language is the bond which, when 
England's onsets have parted from the parent stem, 
will yet hold together in ties of brotherhood all the 
members of that race which, as from a second cradle 
in the Caucasus, has wandered from Albion to homes 
deep-set in torrid or arctic zones. 



120 



THE DRAMA.* 



We have no sympathies with persons who regard 
with indifference the state and prospects of the drama 
as a national amusement. We cannot shut our eyes 
to the fact that the noblest dramatic poetry has been 
produced at the most brilliant epochs of national 
history. We cannot regard with apathy or aversion 
a branch of art which delineates and appeals directly 
to some of the most earnest and ennobling impulses 
of humanity ; which, in its graver forms, is auxiliary 
to moral refinement, and in its lighter, a healthy im- 
plement of satire or of mirth. We do not find that 
the nations which have been devoid of theatrical re- 
presentations have surpassed, either in dignity of 
thought or decorum of manners, the far greater num- 
ber which have cherished and developed a national 
stage; on the contrary, we are disposed to consider 
these exceptional races — and the exceptions are sin- 
gularly few — as deficient in the higher arts also, and 

* Keprinted from the ' Quarterly Eeview,' June 1854. 
Dramatic Register for 1853. 12mo. 



PREJUDICES AGAINST IT. 121 

wanting some of the nobler elements of civilization. 
Admitting the transitory nature of histrionic powers, 
and their consequent inferiority to the genius which 
impresses the canvas and the stone with enduring 
grace and life, we cannot but remember that the 
names of Roscius and iEsopus are as immortal as 
those of Cicero and Caesar; and that the fame of 
Garrick and Siddons is scarcely less a possession for 
ever than the conversation of Johnson, the portraits 
of Reynolds, and the eloquence of Burke. That the 
stage has too often been applied to unworthy pur- 
poses, and reflects too often the coarser features of 
an era, we allow; but the fault rests as much with 
the age as with the theatre. The theatre, depending 
more than any other department of art upon public 
opinion, complies with rather than thwarts its ca- 
prices; and public opinion and the press have it at 
all times in their power to correct the errors of the 
stage. Yet it would be unjust to the theatre to deny 
that it has in an equal degree responded to the higher 
impulses of the age. We possess the loftiest and 
most various drama in the world — the exponent of 
sublime and various intellect at epochs of great deeds 
and thoughts ; and to decry the drama as a whole, 
because some of its component phases have been 
censurable, is on a par with the prejudices which 
would banish sculpture, painting, and poetry from 
the pursuits of Christian men, because there are ob- 
jectionable statues or licentious pictures and poems. 

G 



122 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

It is accordingly matter of earnest regret to us, to 
be so frequently assured that our national drama is, 
at the present moment, on the decline; that it has 
lost its hold on the intellectual and the refined ; that 
good men denounce it from their pulpits and inter- 
dict it to their households ; that all is naught in it 
from Dan to Beersheba ; and that a taste for its pro- 
ductions denotes an ill-regulated mind, or a frivolous 
disposition. We do not propose, in the following re- 
marks upon the present state of the stage and dra- 
matic literature, to meet these objections directly. 
It will suffice to show what is the actual condition, 
healthy or unhealthy, declining or advancing, of the 
British theatre. If we mistake not, while there is 
much in it to wish otherwise, there is also fair ground 
for commendation. We shall have done something 
towards clearing up a vexed and imperfectly under- 
stood question, if we can show probable grounds of 
hope for the future. 

It must be owned that the drama labours under 
many disadvantages at the present moment. We shall 
not dwell upon their more obvious causes — the habits 
of social life, the inroads made upon the attractions 
of the theatre by the counter-attractions of literature, 
or the ebb of fashion from the stage doors. These 
disadvantages are on the surface, and a sudden turn 
in the world's tide would repel and obliterate them. 
Their sources lie much deeper, and must be sought 
in the character and tendencies of the age itself. 



SIMILARITY OF MANNERS. 123 

It is perhaps an inevitable result of advancing 
civilization, that it levels in great measure the external 
and salient points of individual character, and thus 
deprives the drama of one of its principal aliments 
and attractions. Evil passions and evil natures are 
unhappily, indeed, the accompaniments of every age, 
but they do not therefore always exhibit themselves 
under dramatic forms. The crimes and woes of " old 
great houses" seldom affect in our days either the 
annals of the world or the passions of individuals. 
Wars have lost their chivalric character ; politics are 
no longer tissues of dark intrigues, revealed only by 
their results, but hidden during their process in im- 
penetrable darkness. Society has ceased to be di- 
vided into castes, or distinguished by outward and 
visible tokens of grandeur or debasement. Our man- 
ners and habits have grown similar and unpicturesque. 
A justice on the bench is no longer worshipful; a 
squire, except in the eyes of some poaching varlet, is 
no more " the petty tyrant of his fields ; n we take 
the wall of an alderman, and feel no awe in the pre- 
sence of a mayor ; lords ride in cabs ; the coach, with 
six Flemish horses, with its running footmen and 
linkbearers, has vanished into infinite space ; a knight 
of the shire may be the son of a scrivener ; our men 
on 'Change have doffed their flat caps and shining 
shoes ; there are no bullies in Paul's Walk, and 
hardly a Toledan blade within the liberties of Lon- 
don. " The toe of the peasant comes near the heel 

g 2 



124 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

of the courtier." Our very inns have dropped their 
pictorial emblems : we write, instead of paint, our 
tavern-heraldry. Town and country are nearly one. 
Clarendon says of a certain Earl of Arundel, that 
"he went rarely to London, because there only he 
found a greater man than himself, and because at 
home he was allowed to forget that there was such a 
man." Lord Arundel's policy would be unavailing 
now. Our humours and distinctions are wellnigh 
abolished, and the drama, so far as it depends upon 
them, is deprived of its daily bread. The stage-poet 
cannot find his Bobadil in any lodging in Lambeth, 
nor his Justice Shallow in Gloucestershire, nor 
Ancient Pistol in Eastcheap. The "portrait of a 
gentleman or lady " at the Exhibition may represent 
four-fifths of our similar generation. 

Further afield then must our dramatists seek, if 
they draw from life, for their models of passion and 
humour. For the most part they suffer no especial 
inconvenience from the stoppage of supplies, inas- 
much as they import them ready-made from the 
banks of the Seine. We shall advert presently to 
the number and character of these importations. 
For the present it suffices to remark, that this assi- 
milation of the external forms of life operates un- 
favourably upon the drama in two or three direc- 
tions. It deprives the author of his fund of charac- 
ters. It renders the audience less apprehensive of 
individual properties, and more eager for startling 



A PLAY-GOER IN DIFFICULTIES. 125 

effects upon the scene. The spectator comes to wit- 
ness in representation something different from what 
he sees daily in the streets and markets, in the law- 
courts or the drawing-room, and is discontented if 
the plot have in it no dash of extravagance, or the 
costume and scenery do not blaze with splendour. 
The scarcity of healthier food renders him the more 
eager for high and artificial condiments. His palate 
too has been previously vitiated by the circulating 
library. Macbeth is flat after Jack Sheppard; Sir 
Anthony Absolute is dull beside Mr. Pickwick. Our 
earnestness and our sport have travelled at railway 
speed during the present century; and the drama, 
like "panting Time," in Johnson's prologue, either 
" toils after them in vain," or outstrips them by dint 
of surpassing extravagances of story or decoration. 

When Sir Roger de Coverley made known his in- 
tention of going to the play, the Spectator and Cap- 
tain Sentry had no difficulty in discovering at what 
theatre that very legitimate drama ' The Distrest 
Mother ' would be enacted. But a country gentle- 
man of the present day, unacquainted with town — 
if, indeed, such a rara avis survive in this age of 
locomotion — and recurring to his early recollections 
of Elliston at Drury Lane, or Kemble at Covent 
Garden, would be sorely puzzled at first in his search 
for either regular tragedy or comedy. At Covent 
Garden he would find Italian Opera installed ; at 
Drury he might indeed light upon Mr. G. V. Brooke, 



126 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

" cleaving the general ear ; " but he would quite as 
likely read in the bills of the evening, that a gentle- 
man would walk across the ceiling, or that Franconi's 
stud would exhibit, or that a second Italian Opera 
awaited him. At the Hay market he would witness 
indeed an excellent comedy of Mr. Planche's, but 
none of his old favourites, Moreton's, or the younger 
Colinan's, or Reynolds's once popular plays. He 
would discover that the English Opera House had 
foregone its name and vocation, and ' Tom and Jerry ' 
given place at the Adelphi to Mr. Taylor's admirable 
play, 'Two Loves and a Life/ But his amazement 
would be transcendent on learning .that his best 
chance of meeting with Shakespeare would be in the 
remote regions where horrors or nautical heroics 
were wont — " Consule Tullo, in the good days when 
George the Third was King" — to reign supreme, 
namely, at the Surrey or Victoria Theatres, beyond 
the bridges, or at Sadler's Wells, once the Naumachia 
of our metropolis. 

To this Regio Transtiberina of London, indeed, has 
recently migrated the popularity of the so-called 
" legitimate drama." Here, and in some of the City 
theatres and saloons, managers can reckon upon re- 
munerating profits for the production of the ' Tempest ' 
and ' Henry V./ the ' Duchess of Main' and the ' School 
for Scandal.' Here the check-taker bawls, " Pit full!" 
and gives the check he takes ; here spectators endure 
five acts, and forbear to vex the manager's brain with 



ITS MIGRATIONS. 127 

calls for novelties ; and here rarely, if ever, penetrate 
the last devices of the Porte St. Martin. If the 
spirits of defunct managers be permitted at any time 
to revisit the glimpses of the moon, that of old J. 
Davidge would find matter enough for meditation 
upon " mutabilitie." Ariel skims and Prospero stalks 
over the boards once dedicated to brigands and mid- 
night murder ; and the ' Midsummer Night's Dream ' ♦ 
displays its faery wonders and mortal perplexities 
upon the area where British tars fought over again 
the battles of the Baltic and the Nile. Johnson 
rightly predicted that on the stage of old Drury 
11 new Hunts might box, and Mahomets might dance ;" 
but the migration of Shakespeare to Southwark and 
Islington was a prodigy beyond the bounds of his 
vision. 

For these effects, whether defective or not, and 
which assuredly are not altogether unfavourable as- 
pects of the drama's condition, many causes may be 
assigned. But in order to set them in as clear a 
light as possible, whether as symptoms of theatrical 
renascence or decline, we shall briefly survey, in the 
first place, the representations current at more western 
theatres, and in what are esteemed more civilized 
regions of the metropolis. And as many of our 
readers may be unaware of the number of plays 
yearly brought out as novelties, as well as that of 
the theatres now open to the public, or the amount 
of persons directly or indirectly employed in minis- 



128 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

tering to them, we think that the following facts 
may not be unacceptable : — 

In certain recesses of the Palace of St. James, in 
Westminster, are annually deposited some hundreds 
of manuscripts, the records of gratified or disappointed 
expectations. These manuscripts are copies of the 
dramas licensed for representation during the preced- 
ing twelve months. Of this number not a third finds 
its way to the press, or establishes itself in public 
favour and remembrance; and of those which are 
printed, fewer still survive the year which gave them 
birth. It is not, indeed, desirable that there should 
be more frequent disinterments from this dramatic 
cemetery, since few of its inmates merit a resurgam 
upon their escutcheon ; yet, in the mass, they deserve 
some attention, as the abstracts and chronicles of the 
theatrical character of the age. 

We do not allege these facts as implying any es- 
pecial reproach either to the authors who produce or 
to the public which neglects this class of writings. 
Dramatic literature, as regards the majority of its 
productions, is, like the art of the actor, ephemeral. 
It partakes too much of the passing sentiments or 
caprices of the age, and is addressed too entirely to 
the eyes and ears of present spectators, to contain, 
in general, the germs of perpetuity. If we except 
Shakespeare and a few of the greater luminaries of 
his age, the elder drama owes its partial immortality 
more to its poetic than its dramatic strength. Of 



NUMBER OF PLAYS. 129 

those which linger in the closet, few would be now 
endurable on the stage. And at the time these were 
novelties nearly the whole imaginative powers of the 
English mind were engrossed in the service of the 
theatre ; whereas, in the present day, with a few ex- 
ceptions, no poet of any distinction has tried even 
his 'prentice hand in dramatic composition. Lyrical 
verse has absorbed the most profound and original of ■ 
our poetic writers ; and the novel has appropriated to 
itself the talents which, two centuries ago, would have 
been in the pay of Henslowe or Alleyne. It is ac- 
cordingly less surprising that so few modern plays 
should survive their birth-year, than that so many 
dramatic writers should be found exerting themselves 
in a province of art in which a few weeks of applause 
are generally succeeded by irretrievable oblivion. 

In the year 1853, two hundred and six dramas 
were licensed for representation, and, with very few 
exceptions, produced at various metropolitan or pro- 
vincial theatres ; and in that year the number of no- 
velties fell short of the sums of former equal periods. 
Of these, the majority were one, two, or at most three 
act pieces, the experience of managers or the capa- 
bilities of the actors having, we suppose, afforded 
grounds for declining the old-established play of five 
acts. The precepts of Horace and the practice of 
our elder dramatic writers are, indeed, seldom ob- 
served by modern poets or critics; and the almost 
universal custom of adapting Trench originals has 

g 3 



130 ESSxVYS ON THE DRAMA. 

tended much to the abbreviation of plots and acts. 
Occasionally, indeed, an opposite excess has been at- 
tempted, and a monstrum informe, in eight or nine 
acts, has drawn its slow length through an entire 
evening, but the experiment was not so successful as 
to be repeated. It would not be easy to classify or 
to draw any general conclusions upon the state or 
prospects of dramatic literature from these two hun- 
dred and six plays. Properly speaking, the elder dis- 
tinctions of tragedy, comedy, and melodrama, such 
as prevailed in the age of the patent theatres, are 
nearly extinct. The saloons are still occasionally 
chambers of melodramatic horrors, such as once at- 
tracted audiences to the Coburg and the Surrey 
Theatres. But the passion for volleys of musketry, 
and trap-doors, and red and blue lights has much 
declined, and with it, in considerable measure also, 
the amiable disposition to regard a British tar as an 
eminent philanthropist, and the Hounslow brigade as 
the redresser of the wrongs of man and the inequa- 
lities of wealth and station. On the whole, a con- 
siderable improvement both in morals and taste is 
apparent even in the theatres where gentlemen may 
be seen in the dress-circle unencumbered with coats, 
and where the pit, from the prevalence of Israelitish 
physiognomy in its rows, exhibits an apparent ap- 
proach to the restoration of the Jews. The theatre, 
indeed, at the present moment, is in more danger 
from the social and sentimental corruptions of the 



POPULAR, NOT NATIONAL. 131 

French stage, than from exhibitions of open ruf- 
fianism, or the coarser species of vice and crime. 
Yet, notwithstanding these partial improvements, the 
question whether we possess, or are nearer than for- 
merly to the possession of, a national drama, remains 
nearly as far from solution as ever. That dramas 
under few obligations, beyond the skill displayed in 
their plot and dialogue, to our ingenious neighbours, 
can attain popularity, has been proved by the success 
of Messrs. Taylor and Reade's plays. But ( Masks 
and Faces/ and 'The King's Rival/ and 'Plot and 
Passion/ are exceptional instances of merit, and rather 
encourage the hope of a restoration of a national 
drama, than prove its existence at present. It is 
equally curious and mortifying to remark that, in 
most cases of the announcement of a new and suc- 
cessful piece, its French parentage is openly avowed, 
and credit taken for the skill displayed in its adapta- 
tion to a British audience. Nor is it any defence or 
palliation of the debt, that our elder dramatists were 
equally indebted to Italian or Spanish originals. They 
were indebted to Spanish and Italian novels doubt- 
less, though seldom until such novels had passed by 
translation into popular belief and favour; but the 
dramatic treatment of the stories was original, and 
had not been anticipated by the librettos of the Ya- 
rietes and Porte St. Martin. 

The popular drama of the day is accordingly in no 
intelligible sense of the term national, but, like so 



132 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

much of our costume, a Parisian exotic. How does 
it fare, on the other hand, with the drama of which 
we justly boast, as having surpassed in amplitude of 
proportion and in earnestness of feeling, not only the 
classic frigidity of Corneille and Racine, but the au- 
thentic grandeur and harmony of the great Athenian 
masters — with the drama which stimulated the genius 
of Alfieri, and filled with wonder and emulation the 
far loftier and deeper souls of Goethe and Schiller? 
It is our boast, that we are the countrymen of Shake- 
speare and his contemporaries ; but we cannot find or 
make them generally attractive on the stage. It is 
not for lack of enterprise or accessories; but either 
there is some mistake in the application of them, or 
the public has been accustomed to a different fare, 
and lost its appetite for the diet which it pronounces 
to be unrivalled. Never were scene-painters more 
expert, or upholsterers more inventive ; never was ar- 
chaeology more in request for dramatic illustrations, 
or managers more determined to be scrupulous in 
costume and landscape. Yet all this avails them 
little or nothing — the Mordecai of Parisian ' ' effects " 
sits at their gate; and after a brief curiosity about 
the ghost of Banquo, or the heraldry of King John, 
has been sated, the romantic and historic drama pales 
its ineffectual fire before the irresistible attractions 
of the ( Corsican Brothers ' or ' Janet Pride V The 
public, at least as represented by the press, quarrels 
with the managers for corrupting the national taste ; 



RECRIMINANT PARTIES. 133 

the managers retort on the public, that it cherishes 
the corruption of which it complains ; and both shift 
the blame upon the actors. " Give us/' says the 
public, " a succession of Kembles, of Keans, or Mac- 
readies, and we will dispense with the decorator and 
the upholsterer : " " Find us," say the managers, " a 
Mrs. Jordan or a Miss O'Neill, and we will spare 
ourselves the cost of acres of canvas and galaxies of 
light, red and blue:" "Afford us," say the actors, 
" equal opportunities for learning and perfecting our- 
selves in the several departments of our art which our 
predecessors enjoyed, and we will prove to you that 
the ancient spirit is not dead, but cabined, cribbed, 
and confined by the fetters imposed upon it in dramas 
which exclude passion, probability, and imitation of 
life and manners." 

We think that each of the recriminant parties 
might make out a very plausible case for itself, which 
yet, as a whole, would be an invalid defence. The 
public might allege, — We come to your houses for 
amusement, and not for a lecture upon scenery, archi- 
tecture, and dress. The managers might plead, — We 
are engaged in a commercial speculation, no less than 
the momentous business of earning a livelihood — we, 
who live to please, must please to live ; and since you 
respond to decoration and pomp more readily than to 
character and passion, with pomp and decoration we 
are fain to provide you. Lastly, the actors might as 
fairly urge, — We are clay in the potter's hands ; and 



134 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

so long as you obscure us with light, and dwarf us 
amid colossal scenery and processions, you render us 
the secondaries of the stage, and, for any effect we 
produce, might dispense with us altogether, and ex- 
pend our salaries upon yet costlier panoramas. 

None of these complaints, we are inclined to think, 
touch the evil complained of. They are, in the first 
place, vague ; and, in the next, they apply equally to 
the drama of the last century. Since the restoration 
of monarchy and the theatres, indeed, there has never 
been a generation in which these or similar murmurs 
were not audible. Alleyne and Henslowe, and some 
of their contemporaries, realized respectable fortunes 
by management, and found performers whom both 
themselves and their audiences approved. But their 
lines were set in pleasant places. The habits of social 
life favoured them : the novel, the newspaper, and 
the club, the late dinner, and the accomplishments of 
the world, were not their foe : a morning walk in 
PauPs, or a morning ride on the great highway of 
Oxford-street, was followed by an afternoon visit to 
the Globe or Bull ; and if the courtier or the citizen 
heard the chimes at midnight, the tavern and not 
the theatre was in fault. We cannot revert to their 
habits and hours, and must be content to forego with 
them some of our dramatic spirit. Neither are our 
theatres, as they were in the age of Anne and the 
earlier Georges, the resort of statesmen and their 
supporters for the purpose of political displays and 



NUMBER OF THEATRES. 135 

intrigues. A Chancellor of the Exchequer present- 
ing a purse of gold to Mr. Kean for his defiance of 
the Pope in King John, would be a spectacle more re- 
munerating to a manager than the most captivating 
importation from the Porte St. Martin ; the expe- 
dience of Lord John Russell's or Lord Derby's pre- 
sence in the side boxes for a few minutes in the even- 
ing, would lend new radiance even to Mr. Buckstone's 
habitual good spirits. We have learnt to separate 
business from recreation; and however it may fare 
with the former, the theatre has ceased to be an in- 
dispensable diversion for our Harleys and Godolphins. 
The support of the higher classes is no longer in- 
cluded among managerial anticipations of profit. Her 
Majesty, indeed, is a most efficient patron of the drama; 
but even court favour is not a counterpoise to the ebb 
and recession of u the world " from the dress-boxes. 

We doubt however whether, in spite of the abs- 
traction of so important an element, the number of 
playgoers has materially declined. We are rather 
disposed to think that it corresponds with the greatly 
increased sum. of our metropolitan population. In 
place of some half-dozen theatres, licensed for per- 
formance during a few months in the year, and de- 
nominated according to their licenses, the winter and 
summer theatres, there are now in the Metropolis 
twenty-five theatres and saloons, the larger portion of 
which are open to the public from October to August. 
At the lowest estimate, these establishments find 



136 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

employment for three thousand persons on their pre- 
mises, without including the numbers engaged at their 
own houses or work-rooms in the various arts of de- 
coration and costume which the stage requires. We 
may calculate that the audiences nightly resorting to 
these twenty-five houses, amount to five thousand, 
without reckoning the extraordinary resort to them 
at the seasons of Christmas and Easter, or during 
the "first run" of a successful novelty. Our com- 
putation will not appear extravagant to any one who 
has witnessed the crowds awaiting the opening of the 
pit doors of the Adelphi or Princess's Theatres du- 
ring the earlier performances of the ( Thirst of Gold/ 
or { Faust and Margaret/ We do not, indeed, pre- 
sume from these facts, that the course of managers 
runs with uniform and unprecedented smoothness; 
but they afford a fair presumption that we have not 
ceased, as is sometimes vaguely asserted, to be a play- 
going people. The sum of spectators is distributed 
indeed over a wider surface, and particular exchequers 
may have been less uniformly replenished; but on the 
aggregate there has been an increase, — the theatres, 
amid many disturbing influences at work, have not 
lacked support. 

Amid these adverse influences should be reckoned 
the attractions afforded by our numerous literary and 
scientific institutions, and the growing popularity of 
Shakespearian Readings. If it is good to be amused, 
it is better to be instructed ; and if the poetic drama 



LECTURES AND READINGS. 137 

is more justly expounded by Mrs. Fanny Kemble 
than by any performers now on the boards, it is wiser 
to resort to her readings than to the theatre. In some 
degree, both lectures and readings are a compromise 
between the dramatic instincts inherent in our nature, 
and conscientious scruples as regards the theatre. The 
theatre is probably affected by these causes more in 
the quality than the numbers of its frequenters. They 
abstract from its benches many of the more intel- 
lectual members of society, and thus lessen the de- 
mand for a higher and better order of drama. They 
are not, however, features peculiar to the present age. 
They are but repetitions of what has already occurred. 
At Athens the new comedy supplanted its rivals and 
predecessors, much as the modern drama has sup- 
planted Shakespeare and Racine. iEschylus and 
Sophocles would no longer draw, or could not find 
competent representatives ; and the Athenian people, 
who regarded the theatre as a proper object for le- 
gislation, passed a law, to the effect that their elder 
and better drama should thenceforward be read, and 
not acted, at the Dionysiac festivals. We possess no 
similar record of the Roman stage. But we know 
that recitations were as popular at Rome as lectures 
and readings in London, and that the scale of the 
theatres and the tyranny of pantomime had, even 
before the Augustan era, nearly banished the works 
of Attins and Pacuvius, of Terence and Plautus, from 
the boards. The preference for lectures and read- 



138 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

ings may therefore be considered more as an accident 
of civilization than as betokening any immediate or 
peculiar decadence of the drama. 

The inferiority of our actors,, again, is a common 
topic of complaint ; and it frequently proceeds from 
persons who have not entered a theatre for years, or 
who, like Dr. Smell-fungus, think they manage those 
things better in France, and form their notions of 
English acting from a rare and supercilious visit to 
the boxes on a benefit-night. They reverse, indeed, 
the adage, and denounce the unknown as utterly flat 
and unprofitable. But so it has ever been. The 
players, according to such critics, are always descend- 
ing below some fancied standard of excellence . Kemble 
lacked the os magna sonans of Quin, and was less 
graceful than Barry. Quin himself was inferior to 
Booth, and Booth to Betterton. In the opinion of 
Macklin, Garrick as Sir Harry Wildair came short 
of Wilks : in the judgment of Foote, Macklin' s Love- 
gold was not comparable to Shuter's. Charles Lamb, 
whose remarks on acting evince a fine discrimination 
of its properties, awards to Bensley a meed of praise 
at which the few who remember that sensible but 
stiff performer are enforced to smile; and we have 
heard veteran play-goers aver, that Mrs. Siddons was 
generally inferior in dignity to Mrs. Yates. We 
distrust these traditions of vanished perfections, as 
we discredit regrets for good old times. They are, 
we believe, on a par with Don Guzman's lament in 



STYLES OF REPRESENTATION. 139 

' Gil Bias ' over the decrease of the peaches since his 
youth. The stage, as a mirror of the times, partakes 
of their imperfections, as well as of their privileges 
and merits. Styles of representation, no less than 
plays themselves, go out of date. That certain kinds 
of acting were better formerly than now, we have no 
difficulty in admitting ; neither have we now such por- 
traits as Reynolds's, or such eloquence as Burke's. 
Actors, too, leave behind them their equivalents, not 
their express images : our grandsires endured no one 
but King in Sir Peter Teazle and Lord Ogleby; we 
shall probably see no one equal to Farren. The 
greedy, credulous, and bragging elders whom Mun- 
den so incomparably embodied, no longer exist; the 
world has grown picked and dainty, and voted them 
nuisances ; and we doubt whether Munden would not 
now be considered a coarse and improbable actor. 
Nay, we will go a step further, and surmise that, 
could we see the original cast of the f School for Scan- 
dal/ some portions of the performance would be not 
altogether pleasing to our present notions. We have 
seen the ' Beggar's Opera' degraded from a pungent 
yet delicate satire upon the Walpoles and Pulteneys 
to an episode from the Newgate Calendar. Its humour 
had passed away; its songs had lost their savour; 
the actors mistook irony for earnest; we seemed to 
have fallen among thieves, and longed to call for the 
police, and send them packing to Bow-street. We 
have felt something of the kind with regard to cer- 



140 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

tain well-meant revivals of old plays. Their passion 
seemed Titanic; the action improbable; the interest 
remote; the development too sudden and violent. 
Webster's fine tragedy of ' The Duchess of Malfy ' 
was skilfully adapted to the modern stage and well 
acted by Mr. Phelps and his company at Sadler's 
Wells in 1851. Yet the effect of it was more strange 
and solemn than agreeable. It seemed more germane 
to the matter to read of such griefs than to behold 
them embodied. It may be, that in an age of material 
progress we are become less apprehensive of sad and 
stately sorrows, that we look not so passionately into 
the mutations of high estate and the graver aspects 
of life. Beyond the Shakespearian cycle, indeed, few 
of our elder dramas bear revival. Our passion and 
our sport are of lighter texture than were those of 
our forefathers. But it is a false inference that dra- 
matic sensibility is extinct, because certain kinds of 
dramatic composition have ceased to affect us, as well 
as that the actor has degenerated, because he, like 
ourselves, no longer responds to the wild, solemn, 
and preternatural scenes that enthralled our sires two 
centuries ago. 

From the spectators and the performers we now 
pass to the pictorial adjuncts of the drama. With 
one and the same breath almost, we demand and de- 
cry accuracy of costume and splendour of decoration. 
They are indeed ruinous, but they are also indispen- 
sable. Like the capricious lover, we can live neither 



PASSION FOR DECORATION. 141 

with tliem nor without them. We call the managers 
who supply them, stage- upholsterers, and taunt the 
managers who withhold them for their lack of zeal 
on our behalf. l Richard III./ unadorned, will not 
draw houses; revived with historical illustrations of 
dress and scenery — minima pars est ipsa puella sui. 
Between the Charybdis and Scylla of such verdicts, 
the manager should be an adroit pilot to avoid ship- 
wrecks. 

That the passion for decoration has been burden- 
some if not ruinous, to managers, and injurious to 
actors, we admit — with a protest, however, against its 
being reckoned among the peculiar disadvantages of 
either at the present moment. This, like the com- 
plaint of the inefficiency of the elder drama, is of no 
recent origin. It dates as far back as the time of 
Dryden, some of whose plays were brought upon the 
stage with extreme gorgeousness ; it is satirized by 
Pope; it was made a subject of reproach to Garrick, 
and accounted among the errors of John Kemble. 
But it is inconceivable that managers should have 
laboured for so long a period under a common de- 
lusion — a delusion, too, which militated against their 
own interests. Their mistake appears to us to have 
consisted more in the indiscriminate employment of 
the decorative art than in the art itself. The neces- 
sity for ornament is generally in an inverted ratio to 
the merits of the piece on which it is expended, even 
as the most creative poets stand least in need of the 



142 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

painter's aid. Rarely are Homer, Shakespeare, or 
Dante successfully illustrated by artists, although the 
same amount of graphic skill would have been well 
employed upon the pages of Rogers, Moore, or Camp- 
bell. Passion, provided only it finds competent re- 
presentatives, will make itself felt ; wit and humour, 
meeting with fitting exponents, will excite mirthful 
responses. So long as Mr. Charles Kemble per- 
formed Benedick and Mercutio, it mattered little 
whether the scene behind him were an exact repre- 
sentation of a street or garden in Yerona or Mantua, 
or whether his dress were after the fashion of France 
or Italy. The elder Kean attired Othello in a garb 
that no nation could claim for its own, yet no dis- 
creet adviser would have counselled him to exchange 
it for the cumbrous robes of a Venetian magnifico. 
We have seen 'The Rivals' performed in a sort of 
chance-medley costume — a century intervening be- 
tween the respective attires of Sir Anthony and Cap- 
tain Absolute. We have seen the same comedy 
dressed with scrupulous attention to the date of the 
wigs and hoops; but we doubt whether, in any es- 
sential respect, that excellent play was a gainer by 
the increased care and expenditure of the manager. 

Excess of decoration has indeed been, in all ages 
and nations possessing a national drama, a symptom 
and accompaniment of decadence in the histrionic 
art. The dramas of Euripides required more sump- 
tuous attire and more complicated mechanism than 



POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE. 143 

the l Antigone ' or the s Prometheus ;' but the plays 
enacted at the Dionysiac festivals, when Demosthenes 
was a boy, surpassed in pomp the most gorgeous of 
the Euripidean repertory. The extravagance of the 
Alexandrian and Roman theatres is notorious : in- 
terminable processions, " maniples of foot and turms 
of horse," swept across the stage, and the managerial 
wardrobe would have clad the "senate frequent and 
full." The Pompeian games offended Cicero by their 
glare, and Cato by their profusion; but fifty years 
later, Bathyllus and Pylades would have refused to 
act in the presence of scenery so common and sordid; 
and in the age of Claudius and his successor, the stars 
of pantomime, — the " regular drama" was extinct — 
played Agamemnon and Achilles in panoplies of solid 
gold. In the reign of Philip IV., the accoutrements 
of the Theatre Royal at Madrid were as sumptuous as 
those of the Viceroy of Arragon, and that too in an 
age when silver and gold plate were displayed upon 
the sideboards even of nobles of the third order. 
Louis XIV. was more economical in his theatrical 
pleasures; yet a thousand crowns were occasionally 
expended by him upon a single masque or pastoral 
at the court -theatre at Versailles — with what advan- 
tage to the drama, those inexpressibly tame and te- 
dious productions will satisfactorily prove to any one 
enterprising or patient enough to read them. 

It appears to us that an understanding among the 
managers of the metropolitan theatres themselves 



144 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

might lead to the saving of much forethought, anxiety, 
and expense to many of them individually. To such 
keen rivals, and to a class of men supposed to be suf- 
ficiently irritable, it may seem hazardous to suggest 
the plan of a dramatic congress for the purpose of 
adopting a classification of theatres. If such a scheme 
be practicable — and to be practicable it requires only 
a general consent of the parties interested, — its ad- 
vantages are obvious. Their various experiences in 
different regions of the Metropolis, would constitute 
the materials for a Report upon the condition of the 
drama. The capacity of the several theatres would 
afford data of the expenses that might be incurred 
with a fair chance of profit. It would be seen from 
the particular returns what species of drama is most 
popular and remunerating in any given neighbour- 
hood. But the principal advantage of such a con- 
gress would be the suspension, and perhaps eventually 
the extinction, of a rash and reckless as well as an 
unfair system of mutual opposition. The play-bills 
will illustrate our meaning. Constantly it happens 
that, when a novelty has proved successful at one 
theatre, it is adopted, with certain changes — mutatis 
mutandis — at another, although the piece may be 
peculiarly suited to the house which originally brought 
it out. It is perhaps impossible to establish a copy- 
right in such cases, because the rival versions of a 
popular drama, including the earliest in the field, are 
probably derived from the same Parisian prototype. 



COMPETITION. 145 

Yet even priority of adaptation, and consequently of 
risk, ought, in our opinion, to secure priority of profits. 
We will cite two recent instances of the invasion of 
dramatic property. ' The Corsican Brothers/ in its 
English dress, appeared originally at the Princess's 
Theatre, and was immediately successful. In the 
course of a month there were four or five versions of 
the 'Freres Corses/ substantially the same as that 
performing at the Princess's Theatre. With ' Sar- 
danapalus' the case was even worse. To have pro- 
duced Byron's play with equally costly accompani- 
ments would have been a hazardous experiment. But 
another course was open — to turn the whole into 
ridicule ; and accordingly burlesques were speedily 
produced at the Strand and Adelphi Theatres. Now 
we contend that in such procedure there was much 
unfairness. The manager of the Princess's Theatre 
was, in fact, catering for two rival establishments, and 
remunerated by one only. There was no redress : 
neither of the burlesques were morally objectionable, 
and the public regarded with indifference the scramble 
between the rival houses. 

We could allege many similar instances of un- 
generous competition. The evil, for such we must 
consider it, would be met by a better understanding 
among the managers themselves, who are the princi- 
pal sufferers from their own collisions. A " concordat" 
such as we have suggested would assign to different 
theatres different classes of dramas ; the actors would 

H 



146 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

be better classified and better drilled, and the public 
reap the benefit of special and well-defined perfor- 
mances, elaborated by constant and undivided prac- 
tice. That such an arrangement is neither imprac- 
ticable nor visionary is a conclusion warranted by its 
success wherever it has been partially attempted in 
this country, as well as by its results where, as in 
France, it has been long and generally adopted. We 
do not presume to offer any more particular sugges- 
tions — "quod fabrorum est tractent fabri," — but in 
further confirmation of our views, we proceed to take 
a rapid glance at such of our theatres as recently or 
for some time past have restricted themselves to 
special classes of dramatic entertainments. We shall 
have much mistaken the matter, if it can be proved 
that the comparative prosperity of these houses has 
not mainly arisen from the judicious limits imposed 
upon their performances by the managers themselves. 
We desire to avoid invidious distinctions; but no 
one acquainted with the various metropolitan theatres 
will cavil at our naming* the Lyceum, the Princess's, 
the Olympic, Sadler's Wells, and the Adelphi, as 
possessing the best disciplined companies and the 
most generally accomplished actors of the day. The 
Lyceum is the home of the vaudeville — we cannot 
add the English vaudeville, for its productions are for 
the most part transplanted; their exotic origin does 
not however affect the merits of their performance 

* This article was written in 1854. 



DIVISION OF PERFORMANCES. 147 

and mise-en-scene. The Olympic deals with comedies 
of a higher order, often of native growth, and often, 
latterly, judicious revivals ; but its reproductions, as 
well as its novelties, form an intermediate class be- 
tween the old five-act drama and the lighter and more 
evanescent trifles of the Lyceum. At the Princess's 
we occasionally have Shakespeare represented with all 
the pomp and circumstance of modern art, but its 
stock-pieces are of a more prosaic stamp, of an order 
midway between tragedy and melodrama, and defi- 
cient certainly neither in interest nor dramatic effects. 
The Adelphi has established a kind of vested property 
in dramas — genuine Adelphi dramas, in the language 
of its bills — which may perhaps be most correctly de- 
fined as combinations of melodrama with farce. Of 
Sadler's Wells, as the most popular retreat of the 
regular drama, we have already spoken ; its audiences 
demand few novelties, and retain the rare faculty of 
sitting out five-act pieces. 

It is, however, less to the particular merits than to 
the systematic discrimination of these performances 
that we direct our reader's attention. We believe 
that the above -enumerated theatres are, from year to 
year, the most steadily attractive. The spectators 
know what order of drama they may look for within 
their walls; the actors are drilled to definite func- 
tions, and enjoy the inestimable benefit of playing for 
many successive seasons together. The decline of 
the patent theatres was, we believe, principally owing 

h 2 



148 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

to their departure from a similar wholesome regimen. 
The success of the most remunerative theatres at the 
present moment is in great measure due to their re- 
sumption of it. An experiment which, wherever it 
has been fairly tried, has proved uniformly salutary, 
needs, in our opinion, only a more general application 
of it in order to render our national stage as effective 
in all its departments as the Parisian. If the expe- 
diency of such a classification were once generally re- 
cognized by managers, the inconveniences and unfair- 
ness of competition would cease, and the Lord Cham- 
berlain, by granting licenses for distinct classes of 
entertainment to the various establishments under his 
jurisdiction, would confirm and sustain the improved 
organization of theatrical entertainments. And this, 
or some equivalent system of arrangement, has become 
the more indispensable as regards the training of the 
performers, now that the provinces have nearly ceased 
to supply efficient recruits to the metropolitan stage. 
In nearly a third of our cities and towns the play- 
house is closed : it has been converted into a chapel, 
a corn-market, or a lecture-room. Even where a 
manager is enterprising enough to risk a season, it is 
usually brief and precarious. At York, Bath, and 
Norwich, at one time the acknowledged nurseries of 
the London stage, and which successively sent up 
the Kembles, Young, Macready, Liston, Blanchard, 
Dowton, and a host of lesser luminaries, the dramatic 
campaign ordinarily extended over at least six months 



PROVINCIAL THEATRES. 149 

of the year. A London " star " was ably seconded 
by provincial satellites, and the latter found no diffi- 
culty in keeping pace with the performances at Drury 
Lane and Covent Garden. The oldest and most ex- 
clusive of the country families regarded periodical 
visits to the theatre as much a portion of their social 
duties as attendance at Quarter Sessions or an Assize 
ball. To be absent from the regular bespeaks of the 
High Sheriff or the Members was a mark of eccen- 
tricity, or a deficiency in respect to those magnates ; 
nor was there lacking any interest in the performance 
or in the merits of the respective performers. But at 
the present moment the High Sheriff might as well 
conjure spirits from the deep as expect that an over- 
flowing audience will come at his call. A few of his 
tenants may gather round their landlord, but his co- 
mates and acquaintance are deaf as adders to his sum- 
mons. Provincial acting is indeed nearly defunct. 
The City theatres stand in the place of the provincial 
houses; thither popular performers from the Strand 
and Haymarket flock as "stars," and there are ab- 
sorbed the few country celebrities which remain. But 
the City theatres are by no means equivalents, as 
schools of acting, for their extinct country predeces- 
sors. The standard of ability is of a lower kind ; the 
species of dramas which they represent demand rather 
strength of lungs than professional knowledge. The 
regular discipline of a respectable country stage — the 
discipline that, directed by Tate Wilkinson at York, 



150 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

and Brunton at Norwich, drilled so many serviceable 
recruits, both rank and file, for the metropolitan 
boards — is seldom practised in establishments where 
rant and buffoonery suffice, and where most of the 
pieces represented are versions of the newspaper novel, 
or of third-rate tales from third-rate circulating libra- 
ries. Scarcely an instance occurs of a City theatre 
or saloon supplying the stage with even a tolerable 
addition to its forces. 

We have however said already that we distrust 
the alleged superiority of the actors of former days, 
and of the general decline of acting at the present 
moment. We believe, on the contrary, that, with a 
better system of co-operation, a single English theatre 
would rival, in the refinement and effectiveness of its 
corps dramatique, any single Parisian house. We 
have seen no French comedians, in the same line, bet- 
ter than our incomparable pair of Keeleys. The St. 
James's Theatre has hitherto imported no performer, 
with the single exception of Regnier, more variously 
accomplished or more consummate in skill than Mr. 
Alfred Wigan; and Mr. Charles Matthews, even in 
parts more exacting than the usual repertoire of the 
Lyceum vaudeville, has few equals, — we are inclined 
to add, no superior. It is rarely found that actors 
excel alike in the lighter humours and the more 
earnest passions. Garrick and Henderson are perhaps 
almost solitary exceptions of equal and transcendent 
merit in Hamlet and Benedick, in Macbeth and Me- 



BURLESQUES. 151 

grim, in Richard and Abel Drugger. John Kemble 
in comedy, in spite of Lamb's eulogy, was recorded 
in his day among "the miseries of human life," and 
the elder Kean was absolutely intolerable in the few 
attempts he made in the service of Thalia. The pre- 
sent stage however affords an actor who combines 
passion with humour in a remarkable degree, and, in 
the midst of the ludicrous embarrassments of comedy, 
presents us with fervent tragic pathos. No one can 
have witnessed the performances of Mr. F. Robson at 
the Olympic Theatre, without being struck with the 
narrowness of the bounds between sport and earnest. 
His farce has a pathetic depth, a grave earnestness, 
that touch, at one and the same moment, the sources 
of tears and laughter. He is partly Liston and partly 
Kean. With less than a cubit added to his stature 
Mr. Robson would be among the first Shakespearian 
actors of the day. It is unfortunate both for himself 
and the spectators that his physical qualifications are 
not in better accordance with his dramatic genius. 
He lacks presence only to mate Kean in Shylock and 
Overreach, or Macready in Virginius and Lear. 

Mr. Robson, we believe, at one time obtained con- 
siderable repute as an actor in burlesques. He has 
fortunately escaped from the evil effects of that most 
stupid and barren department of theatrical entertain- 
ment. In this censure we do not of course include 
such admirable samples of Aristophanic fun as Mr. 
Planche so often produces, or Mr. Tom Taylor's ' Dio- 



152 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

genes and his Lantern/ These are legitimate sketches 
of follies as they fly. But the burlesque — which, like 
an impure flesh-fly, battens upon the imagination of 
Shakespeare or the pathos of Euripides, which avails 
itself of the solemn and preternatural machinery of 
Macbeth, of the Rembrandt-like picture of the Moor, 
of the aberrations of Hamlet, of the revenge of Shy- 
lock, of scenes and thoughts the most hallowed among 
merely human conceptions, appears to us among the 
most despicable products of shallow and heartless 
writers, equally devoid of respect for their own age, 
or of reverence and gratitude towards their benefac- 
tors in past time. Nor are such productions less dis- 
creditable to their authors than symptoms of decay 
in dramatic art itself. To the spectators the bur- 
lesque is noxious, since it accustoms them to associate 
the low and the absurd with the sublime and the 
earnest; to the actors it is no less injurious, since it 
tends to impress them with distrust and disrespect for 
their art : nay, by exhausting it upon false and super- 
ficial wit, it dulls the edge of legitimate and natural 
humour. Nor is the offence at all lessened in our 
eyes when the parody is at the expense, not of the 
established reputations of the past time, but of con- 
temporary productions of merit. The prospect that 
his work may become a butt for ridicule necessarily 
renders an author timid and diffident of himself. He 
holds his sword like a dancer under the apprehension 
that it may soon be struck from his hand by the bat 



CAUSES OF ITS PARTIAL DECLINE. 153 

of a clown. Actors, audiences, and managers are 
alike interested in stifling these parasitical excres- 
cences of the drama, and in commending the fools 
that use them to some better vent for their pitiful 
ambition. 

In our brief sketch we have endeavoured to survey 
the general aspects and conditions of the national 
drama at the present day. That in some respects it 
has declined we are obliged to admit ; certain species 
of theatrical entertainment are in abeyance, and pro- 
bably will not speedily be revived. No great school 
of actors has succeeded to the Kemble family, and 
with them the higher order of both tragedy and 
comedy has expired ; few modern plays bear the im- 
press of longevity, and will probably be forgotten be- 
fore another year has passed away. For these causes 
of inferiority we have, in great measure, to thank the 
social character of the age itself; literature super- 
sedes the drama on the one hand, and, on the other, 
we have opened different sources of instruction and 
amusement. Yet we do not despond : we believe that 
the remedy lies in a great degree with the managers 
themselves. We are persuaded that a more careful 
elaboration of the means which they possess, a politic 
division of their forces, an abstinence from unfair and 
expensive competition, a stricter discipline of their 
companies, and a more systematic regard to the ethi- 
cal qualities of their productions, will do much to- 
wards winning back to them the educated and intel- 

h 3 



154 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

lectual classes of the community. We would not ex- 
clude spectacle, but restrict it to theatres where the 
space is favourable to gorgeous display. We would 
not banish all importations of foreign librettos, but 
we would recommend the adaptation of them to our 
own social habits and principles. We would borrow 
from them, not as dependants, but as pupils willing 
to be instructed. We have happily not arrived at an 
era of such corruption or degradation as stifled the 
theatres of Athens and Rome. With a literature 
which still commands respect ; with a press un- 
shackled, yet for the most part salutarily controlled 
by public opinion ; with much that is imaginative 
and lofty in the character of the age ; with an almost 
incalculable diffusion of our masculine and harmo- 
nious language, we have still a lively and steadfast 
faith that the nineteenth century will even yet deve- 
lope, as among its befitting exponents, an intellectual, 
moral, and vigorous national drama. 

Our expectations may appear sanguine to the many 
who regard the drama as the pastime of an idle hour, 
and not as a vital branch of the intellectual life of an 
age. We do not ask such persons to affect a spurious 
enthusiasm for times which, being more symbolic in 
their character, were proportionally more dramatic 
also than the present. We would recommend thea- 
trical pedantry as little as ecclesiastical or artistic. 
The recreations of the day, as well as its ritual and 
its arts, must express contemporary feelings, and not 



POSSIBLE REORGANIZATION. 155 

borrow the exponents of them from past phases of 
society. Literature has unquestionably borne off 
many spolia opima from the theatre ; the material de- 
velopment of the age has given a new direction to 
its humours and passions ; yet, in spite of these abate- 
ments, the dramatic spirit is neither dead nor sleeping 
among us ; it has thrown off many encumbrances of 
stilted diction and spurious sentiment; it has em- 
braced new categories of mirth and earnestness; it 
has enlisted accessories unknown to our forefathers. 
In the heart of the chaos which the modern stage too 
generally exhibits, we possess living germs of a drama 
that, skilfully trained and organized, may yet become 
as expressive of the material and intellectual genius 
of the day as the Sophoclean tragedy was of an ethnic 
commonwealth, or the romantic play of a Christian 
monarchy. In developing these materials, authors, 
managers, and the public, have a common interest; 
and the first step towards so desirable a change is the 
recognition, by each in their own sphere and function, 
of the duty of re-organizing the whole system of the- 
atrical entertainments. 



156 



CHARLES KEMBLE.* 



On the morning of the 12th of November, expired, at 
his residence in Saville Row, Charles Kemble, the 
last survivor of a triad of artists, whose names are 
written indelibly in the annals of dramatic art. 

The life of an actor, so far as it is an object of 
public interest, closes with his scenic farewell. The 
decease of an actor, and especially of one long with- 
drawn from the stage, might therefore attract little 
notice at any time beyond the circle of his immediate 
friends, and at the present moment of anxious anti- 
cipation, is more than ordinarily liable to pass from 
the register of the living with merely a brief expres- 
sion of regret. Johnson indeed declared that the 
death of Garrick eclipsed the gaiety of a nation. But 
this was a friendly hyperbole : the nation laughed or 
wept as before, although the mighty master no longer 
touched the chords of its emotions. The actor's task 
is fulfilled when the curtain descends upon his last 
impersonation. 

* Eeprinted from ' Fraser's Magazine,' December 1854. 



CHARLES KEMBLE. 157 

Yet we are unwilling that the name of Charles 
Kemble, so long and intimately associated as it has 
been with the brightest ornaments and the most in- 
tellectual age of the drama, should be written on the 
roll of Death without some accompanying comment 
and commemoration. The poet, the painter, the 
sculptor, and the architect, perpetuate their fame in 
their works ; but it is the hard condition of the actor 
that his art is for the present only ; he has no pa- 
tent for futurity — neither marble, nor canvas, nor 
"breathing thoughts and burning words" embalm 
his genius. With the generation which beheld him, 
his image and his influence pass away. 

We are not in the number of those who regard 
with indifference the condition of the drama. To a 
complete and vital civilization it is essential that no 
province of art should lie fallow and unproductive. 
If it be desirable that the thought of every age should 
be embodied in words, colours, marble, or bronze, — if 
it be important that our material progress should be 
accompanied by a corresponding moral and intellec- 
tual development, — not less desirable and important 
is it that the drama, which claims from all the arts 
"suit and service" in their turn, should retain its 
station among the educational instruments of the 
age. 

But without a great school of actors the drama 
itself necessarily pines and dwindles. Men capable of 
casting their thoughts into dramatic forms will not 



158 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

be at the pains to write when none are competent to 
embody them worthily ; and the more cultivated and 
critical portion of the public abandon the theatre to 
those who are content with rant, buffoonery, spec- 
tacle, and burlesque. That we have still some actors 
who do honour to their art, and still some authors to 
supply them with plays worthy to outlive the present, 
is rather a proof that the ancient spirit is not wholly 
dead, than of the existence of a generally sound con- 
dition of the drama itself. A brief account of one 
who inherited and transmitted a great name may in 
some measure illustrate the causes of the former high 
estate and the present comparative decline of the 
histrionic art among us. 

The youngest by nearly twenty years of a family 
who for almost three generations formed the central 
group of all that was excellent on the stage, Charles 
Kemble was indebted for his eventual position as 
much to the discipline he underwent as to the dra- 
matic powers which he shared or inherited. Nature 
had been bountiful to him in its gifts ; his form was 
noble, his features classical and expressive, his voice, 
although not strong, remarkably melodious. But it 
was the diligent cultivation of these gifts which finally 
earned and secured for him his later and mature fame. 
His brother — who from the difference of their years 
stood to him also in loco parentis — knew well that there 
is no royal road to histrionic excellence. Hence he 
imposed upon the young debutant a probation as strict 



CHARLES KEMBLE. 159 

and regular as he was in the habit of prescribing to 
the least gifted of his associates. Charles Kemble 
was for some years an actor of third and fourth-rate 
parts, both in public and professional estimation, and 
for many more was entrusted with only secondary 
characters. Nor was he an actor who rose rapidly 
in public favour. The public compared him unfairly 
with his elders ; they expected from the incepting 
the completeness of the matured actor. The press, 
which he never courted, repaid his indifference with 
occasional hostility or general silence. He had no 
declamatory tricks to catch the unwary; he never 
condescended to play at either pit or gallery. And 
the audience of those days was not easily contented. 
Nightly in the habit of witnessing performances of 
a high order, their demands were high on all who 
aspired to win their favour. There was indeed less 
smart newspaper criticism in those days; but there 
was instead of it a more competent and formidable 
bench of judges in the pit and boxes to probe and 
admonish the actor. The audiences of that period 
came with comparatively fresh emotions to the thea- 
tre. Their sensations had not been blunted by the 
semi-dramatic excitement of Byron's poems or Scott's 
tales. The novel of that time did not anticipate the 
business of the scene. Neither had the men and 
women of that time, artificial as were their manners 
in many respects, reached that morbid condition of 
civilization which now renders the indulgence or ex- 



160 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

pression of feeling in public little short of a social 
crime. They went to the theatres to be moved, and 
they required that the actor should be able to open 
the sources of their mirth or sorrow. They met him 
halfway, but they expected that on his part he should 
be able to evoke the sympathy which they were ready 
to afford. Nor, at the time when John Kemble and 
Mrs. Siddons were in the zenith of their fame, did 
spectators flock to the theatre merely to be moved or 
amused. The stage was looked upon as a school of 
manners, as well as the most intellectual of all enter- 
tainments. Orators, artists, men of wit and men of fa- 
shion, then resorted to Covent Garden or Drury Lane 
as they now flock to the Opera. To canvass the merits 
and to attend the representations of English actors 
was not then considered a token of inferior breeding. 
It was as legitimate to profess admiration of Shake- 
speare and Jonson as now of Rossini or Donizetti. 
Nous avons change tout cela — with what profit appears 
from the present condition of the English stage. 

In such a period as we have sketched, Charles 
Kemble served his apprenticeship. Behind the cur- 
tain his discipline was severe; before it his judges 
were exacting. But there was a further cause of his 
final excellence — a cause which hardly survives in the 
present day. If we compare a sheaf of playbills fifty 
years old with the present announcements of the thea- 
tre, we shall find that in the one case there was a con- 
stant repetition of established dramas, in the other 






CHARLES KEMBLE. 161 

there is a rapid succession of novelties. If we examine 
these documents more minutely, we shall discover 
also that while the scene-painter and the upholsterer 
are now at least as important personages as the per- 
formers, then the main burden of the play lay on the 
actors' shoulders. Now the effect of repeating ac- 
credited dramas was to render the performer more 
skilful, to improve his manipulation of character, to 
concentrate his attention upon the details of his art. 
To make up for the superficial attractions of novelty 
he was compelled to give a higher finish to his habi- 
tual impersonations. Whatever may have been the 
demerits of theatrical monopoly, it possessed this in- 
estimable advantage to the actors. They played better 
individually and collectively. They were animated by 
a common spirit, and by an emulation not always un- 
generous. To sustain the character of the house was 
no unusual or unworthy ambition. 

It appears to us moreover that the elder actors 
proposed to themselves a different and in some re- 
spects a higher standard of art than prevails among 
their present representatives. They may have been 
more " mannered," for the age to which they played 
was more precise and formal. This however was an 
accident of their generation, balanced by other and 
perhaps less artistic peculiarities in our own. We 
believe the elder school to have been more ideal. 
They held fast at least one principle of art of the 
highest value and moment. They were not content 



162 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

with a succession of fragmentary efforts ; they aimed 
at unity of effect ; they were not disposed to accept of 
occasional bursts of passion as a compensation for 
the neglect of the harmony and repose which enter 
so largely into every genuine work of art. They esti- 
mated the performance on the stage rather by its 
total veracity than by its spasmodic and irregular 
strength, — even as they would have preferred the' 
chastised grace of Reynolds to the exuberant and ca- 
pricious fancy of Turner. 

There may have been somewhat too much of 
system, too elaborate a display of art, in the' decla- 
mation of John Kemble ; and we whose ears are un- 
used to such modulations, and inured if not reconciled 
to the harsh and broken tones of modern elocution, 
should very possibly be affected with a feeling of sur- 
prise if we heard ' Hamlet' or ' Macbeth' so intoned. 
Be this as it may, the art of reciting blank verse and 
dramatic dialogue generally is among the lost arts of 
the stage, and has been supplanted by a trick of enun- 
ciation that relieves the dramatic poet from any obli- 
gation to write in poetic measures. Throughout his 
career, Charles Kemble reflected the influences of his 
early discipline. He was, in the first place, a vera- 
cious actor, neither adding to nor falling short of the 
conceptions of his author. He was moreover a most 
industrious aud painstaking actor, thinking nothing 
done while aught remained to do; inspired with a 
high ideal, assiduously striving to reach it, and pro- 



CHARLES KEMBLE. 163 

bably in his own conception — for such are the feelings 
of every genuine artist — never wholly attaining it. 
He loved his vocation with all his mind and with all 
his strength. He was not one of those actors who 
regard their efforts as taskwork and rejoice when the 
mask is laid aside. He highly rated his profession, 
as one ministrant to the intellect and the heart of 
man — as at once the mirror and the auxiliary of the 
poet, the painter, and the sculptor. All his opportu- 
nities were made subservient to it — his reading, his 
travels, his observation of man and man's works, of 
society, of nature, of contemporary actors native and 
foreign. In all respects the work he had in hand he 
wrought diligently. He had none of the petty jea- 
lousies of his profession. At the zenith of his reputa- 
tion he would undertake characters which inferior 
actors would have declined as derogatory to them. 
He envied no one; he supplanted and impeded no 
one. For his art he was often jealous — never for 
himself. He possessed in an eminent degree the love 
of excellence ; but he was no seeker of pre-eminence. 
Stanch in maintaining his opinions as to the proper 
scope and import of acting, he was*tolerant of oppo- 
sition ; and prompt in discovering and acknowledging 
merit in others. 

His career as an actor began in one generation and 
terminated in another. It commenced at Sheffield in 
1792, and closed -at Covent Garden Theatre in 1840. 
During that period revolutions took place both in 



164 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

social life and literature which directly and in various 
ways affected both the form and substance of the 
drama. Within the first twenty years of the present 
century a new literature arose, a literature which dif- 
fered essentially from that of either the sixteenth or 
the eighteenth centuries. The wits of Queen Anne's 
reign would have deemed the productions of Byron 
and Scott as a recurrence to the earlier and ruder 
periods of Elizabeth; the Elizabethan poets would 
have regarded them as deficient in earnestness and 
erudition. As a satirist Byron might have won the 
applause of Dry den and Pope, and Addison have 
written a ' Spectator' upon the poetical descriptions 
in ' Childe Harold/ As a novelist Scott might have 
ranked with Defoe, and as a poet with Davenant; 
but the age which admired the ' Grand Cyrus' and 
'ClenV would have little relished 'Waverley' and 
the l Heart of Mid-Lothian/ The influence of both 
these poets was unfavourable to the drama. They 
supplied the public with sufficient theatrical excite- 
ment at the fireside, and weaned them from the thea- 
tre by embodying in their writings scenes and senti- 
ments hitherto monopolized by the stage. 

They were not the only and perhaps not the greatest 
poets of their age, but they were the leaders in a spe- 
cies of literature which more than any other has proved 
prejudicial to the taste for theatrical entertainments. 
Shelley, Wordsworth, and Keats, and even Rogers and 
Campbell, were either too limited in their several in- 



CHARLES KEMBLE. 165 

fluences or too remote and abstract in their genius to 
affect materially the public at large ; whereas Scott 
and Byron embraced and commanded a range of sym- 
pathies similar in kind, and nearly commensurate with 
the drama itself. Nor was popular literature the only 
rival of the theatre. The Continent, long sealed to 
Englishmen, was in the fifteenth year of this century 
suddenly thrown open to them, and novel forms of art 
and untried objects of intellectual interest were pro- 
digally afforded to the wealthy and refined classes of 
the community. Beside such attractions the theatre 
paled and waned. The treasures of statuary, painting, 
and music, in their native homes, were simultaneously 
thrown open, and the frequenters of the pit and boxes 
became travellers by land and sea, and connoisseurs 
in arts more intellectual and permanent than any 
theatrical show or any actor's impersonation. Nor 
must we omit the increased religiosity of the times. 
Whether abstract scruples against the stage be well- 
founded or not, this is neither the time nor the place 
to inquire. But it is certain that the passions and 
sentiments of the theatre are frequently such as the 
moralist would discourage; and although the actor 
may at times be a useful auxiliary to the preacher, 
yet his text and his doctrines are not necessarily in 
accordance with those of the pulpit. And thus at 
nearly the same period these counter-attractions — lite- 
rature, foreign travel, and religion — combined their 
opposite influences against the drama, and drew off 
from it myriads of votaries. 



166 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

But in the year 1792 none of these causes of de- 
cline were as yet in operation. Mrs. Siddons, though 
somewhat past her prime, was still in the full majesty 
of matronly beauty; and John Kemble stood confessed 
the legitimate successor of Betterton, Q,uin, and Barry. 
Nor, although they were in shape and gesture proudly 
eminent, were they unsupported. A host of actors, 
the least accomplished of whom might now be the 
protagonist at many London theatres, seconded and 
sustained them — on the spear side, Bensley, Holman, 
the Palmers, and Barrymore — on the spindle side, 
Mrs. Powell, Mrs. Crawford, Miss Brunton, etc. In 
this most high and palmy state of the drama, and 
before audiences at once susceptible of emotion and 
skilful in judgment, the younger Kemble made his 
first appearance in the tragedy of ' Macbeth/ and in 
the subordinate character of Malcolm. 

The earlier impersonations of an actor who rises 
gradually in his profession are rarely remarked at the 
time or remembered afterwards. We have however 
Mr. Boaden's testimony to the " poetry of Charles 
Kemble' s acting" in Guiderius, and his princely de- 
meanour in Malcolm. But it was as the representa- 
tive of second parts that his powers were first mani- 
fested. Those who are old enough to remember the 
Hamlet, Macbeth, and Coriolanus of his majestic 
brother; or the Lady Macbeth, Volumnia, and Mrs. 
Beverley of his matchless sister, will also recall the 
younger Kemble' s chivalrous energy in Macduff, the 



CHARLES KEMBLE. 167 

classical grace of his Aufidius, and the pathos he in- 
grafted upon Lewson. We do not select these cha- 
racters as among his best, but merely as illustrations 
of his powers as an auxiliary to the mature artists of 
his youthful days. In secondary parts he was indeed 
at all times unsurpassed, and he continued to perform 
them long after he occupied the foremost station in 
the ranks of scenic artists. How full of winning grace 
and good-humour was his Bassanio, how humorous 
and true his drunken scene in Cassio, how fraught 
with noble shame after Othello's dismissal of his 
"officer"! He was the only Laertes whom it was 
endurable to see in collision with Hamlet, the only 
Cromwell worthy of the tears and favour of Wolsey. 

"We have great pleasure in calling in the evidence 
of an excellent judge of acting to support our own re- 
collections of Charles Kemble. 

" I never" (says Mr. Robson, in his c Old Play-goer') 
"saw an actor with more buoyancy of spirit than Charles 
Kemble ; Lewis had wonderful vivacity, airiness, and 
sparkle, but he was finicking compared with Charles. 
Who ever played a drunken gentleman as he did? 
His efforts to pick up his hat in Charles Oakley were 
the most laughable, the most ridiculous, the most na- 
tural that can be imagined. I have seen him perform 
the character of Friar Tuck, in a dramatic version of 
Mr. Peacock's ' Maid Marian/ with such an extraor- 
dinary abandonment and gusto, that you were forced 
back to the ' jolly greenwood and the forest bramble.' 



168 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

He absolutely rollicked through the part, as if he had 
lived all his life with Robin and his men, quaffing fat 
ale and devouring venison-pasties. But perhaps his 
masterpiece in this way was Cassio : the insidious 
creeping of the ' deviP upon his senses ; the hilarity 
of intoxication ; the tongue cleaving to the roof of the 
mouth, and the lips glued together; the confusion, 
the state of loss of self, if I may so term it, when he 
received the rebuke of Othello, and the wonderful 
truthfulness of his getting sober, were beyond de- 
scription fine, nay real. No drunken scene I ever 
saw on a stage was comparable to it." 

But the continued labour, the earnest study, and 
unwearied self-examination pursued for many years 
were rewarded by greater achievements than these, 
and crowned at length with the highest recompense 
which an actor can receive for his efforts, viz., that 
after witnessing his performance of particular cha- 
racters, the spectator ever afterwards, even in his 
solitary studies and remembrances, embodies the 
poet's creations in the very image of the actor him- 
self. The names of Faulconbridge and Mark Antony 
instantly evoke the person, the tones, and the looks of 
Charles Kemble. In the one we had before us the 
express image of the medieval warrior, in the other 
that of the Roman triumvir. His Faulconbridge bore 
us back to Runnymede and the group of barons bold 
who wrested the great charter from the craven John. 
His Mark Antony transported us to the Forum and 



CHARLES KEMBLE. 169 

the Capitol, to the 10th Legion at Pharsalia, to Alex- 
andrian revels, and to the great Actian triumph. 
"In such characters" — we again appeal to the ' Old 
Playgoer' — "he just hit the difficult mark. He was 
noble without bluster ; self-possessed without apparent 
effort ; energetic without bombast ; elegant without 
conceit." 

With the single exception of Garrick, Charles Kem- 
ble played well — we emphasize the word because other 
actors whom we have seen have been ambitious of 
variety, and imagined they could assume diversified 
powers when nature had denied them — the widest 
range of characters on record. If he had no equal in 
Benedick, neither had he in Jaffier ; if his Leon and 
Don Felix were unsurpassed, so also were his Edgar in 
'Lear' and his Leonatus in 'Cymbeline/ He was the 
most joyous and courteous of Archers, Charles Sur- 
faces, and Rangers. His Jack Absolute was the most 
gallant of Guardsmen : his Colonel Feignwell a com- 
bination of the best high and the best low comedy, as 
he successively passed through his various assump- 
tions of the Fop, the Antiquary, the Stock-broker, 
and the Quaker. In young Mirabel again he united 
the highest comic and tragic powers In the first 
four acts he revelled in youth, high spirit, and lusty 
bachelorhood : in the last his scene with the bravoes 
and the "Red Burgundy" was for its depth of passion 
equalled alone by Kean's agony and death in Over- 
reach. 



170 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

We should exceed our limits without exhausting 
the list of characters in which Charles Kemble had 
no equal, and in which, without a combination of the 
same personal and intellectual qualities, and the same 
strenuous cultivation of them, we shall never look 
upon his like again. Slightly changing the arrange- 
ment of the words, we take Mr. Hamilton Reynolds's 
admirable lines as the fittest expression of our con- 
viction, that with Charles Kemble departed from the 
stage the gentleman of high life and the representa- 
tive of the classic or romantic hero : — 

" We shall never again see the spirit infuse 
Life, life in the gay gallant form of the Muse. 
Through the heroes and lovers of Shakespeare he ran. 
All the soul of the soldier — the heart of the man. 

" We shall never in Cyprus his revels retrace, 
See him stroll into Angiers with indolent grace, 
Or greet him in bonnet at fair Dunsinane, 
Or meet him. in moonlit Yerona again." 

In his provincial engagements at all times, and 
latterly on the metropolitan boards, Charles Kemble 
performed a range of characters for which his talents 
or his temperament were not so well adapted as for 
parts of chivalry, sentiment, or comic humour. He 
played Shylock, Macbeth, and Othello occasionally, 
but not with the marked success of his Hamlet, 
Romeo, or Pierre. His performance of this order of 
characters arose, latterly at least, from the circum- 
stance that he alone from his position and reputation 
was qualified to support in tragedy his accomplished 



CHARLES KEMBLE. 171 

daughter, on whom had descended the mantle of 
Mrs. Siddons. But whether it proceeded from his 
theory of art, or from his peculiar idiosyncrasy, 
Charles Kemble, so excellent in the representation of 
sentiment, did not in general answer the demands of 
passion. His Shylock has been commended by no 
incompetent judge for "its parental tenderness;" but 
the infusion of tenderness into Shylock's nature we 
conceive to have been an error. Shylock may have 
been attached to Jessica as a wolf to its cub ; but if 
he loved her at all, he loved gold and revenge more ; 
and Shakespeare has, in our opinion, afforded no hint 
of this palliating virtue in his Jew. On the contrary, 
in her presence Shylock'' s language to Jessica is harsh 
and peremptory ; and after she has forsaken him, his 
lamentations are rather for his ducats and Leah's ring 
than for his daughter. Again, Mr. Kemble' s Moor 
was certainly of a noble and loving nature, and his 
form and bearing afforded a good excuse for Desde- 
mona's preference of him to the " curled darlings of 
her nation." But his Roman features and his elabo- 
rate manipulation of the character were not so well 
suited to the rapid alternations of Othello from ab- 
sorbing love to consuming anger, from profound ten- 
derness to yet more profound despair, from faith to 
doubt, from accomplished though erring retribution 
to overwhelming and fathomless remorse. His im- 
personation of the Moor was too statuesque, and, be- 
side the quickening spirit of terror and pity which 

i 2 



172 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

Edmund Kean infused into the part, seemed unreal, 
and was ineffective. 

Macbeth again was a character in which Mr. Kem- 
ble, if it be compared with his other impersonations, 
— for we are now contrasting him with himself in 
various parts, — was less distinguished. Perhaps the 
recollection of his brother's pre-eminence in the Thane 
of Fife acted as a drawback upon his own conceptions, 
and affected him with a kind of despair of rivalry or 
reproduction. But his performance of it lacked the 
usual individuality of his historical and heroic parts : 
his Macbeth was as much " an antique Roman as a 
Dane;" in his Antony the real man seemed to have 
revisited the glimpses of the moon ; but on the heath, 
and at the Palace of Scone, the historical veracity was 
less marked. For the line of characters indeed in 
which Edmund Kean surpassed all the actors of this 
century — Othello, Shylock, Richard, Overreach, etc. 
— Charles Kemble needed certain physical qualifica- 
tions. The dulcet tones of his voice, which in Romeo 
and Hamlet went home to the hearts of his audience 
on the wings of the noble poetry it uttered, were less 
adapted to convey the trumpet notes, the anguish, 
and the wail of darker passions. There were also a 
faintness of colouring in his face and a statuesque 
repose in his demeanour unfavourable to the sudden 
transitions and vivid flashes of emotion which such 
impersonations require. There were perhaps also the 
corresponding intellectual deficiencies — a want of in- 






CHARLES KEMBLE. 173 

tensity, vigour, and concentrating power. And, it 
may be unconsciously, his theory of art led him to 
disregard too much the occasional demands of the 
more intense and uncontrollable passions, and to 
direct his attention rather to the finer and more fleet- 
ing shades of character — tenderness, grace, the elabo- 
ration of the minor strokes of the picture, and the 
classic unity of the whole. 

Between the impersonations of Kean and Charles 
Kemble there was a fontal opposition arising from 
the opposite nature of their respective temperaments. 
Kean never played a part thoroughly : he disregarded 
unity altogether — probably he was incapable of form- 
ing for himself a complete or harmonious idea of any 
dramatic character. He acted detached portions alone, 
but upon these he flung himself with all his mind and 
soul and strength, moral and physical. For such 
abrupt and spasmodic efforts he possessed extraordi- 
nary physical qualifications. An unrivalled command 
of sinewy and expressive gesture ; eyes that emitted 
tender or baleful light ; a brow and lips that ex- 
presed vigour, intensity, and indomitable resolution ; 
and a voice running through the entire gamut of pas- 
sion, and passing easily from an exquisitely touching 
tenderness to the harshest dissonance of vehement 
passion. Hence Kean, who was seldom happy in 
long- sustained speeches, was incomparable in all strik- 
ing, sudden, and impulsive passages. Who that ever 
heard can ever forget the unutterable tenderness of 



174 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

his reply to Desdemona soliciting for Cassio's restora- 
tion to favour — " Let him come when he will, I can 
deny thee nothing :" the blank comfortless despair of 
his " Farewell the tranquil mind, farewell content ! " 
or the hot tearless agony of his "Oh, Desdemona, 
away, away I" Who that ever saw them can ever 
forget his attitude and look — the one graceful as a 
panther in act to spring, the other deadly as a basi- 
lisk prepared to strike — while awaiting the close of 
Anne of Warwick's clamorous passion of grief: or the 
glance of Overreach when Marrall turns against him : 
or the recoil of Luke from his overweening mistress, 
Lady Frugal : or Shylock's yell of triumph, ' { A Daniel 
come to judgment V or the fascination of his dying 
eyes in Richard, when, unarmed and wounded to 
death, his soul seemed yet to fight with Richmond. 
In recording these gifts — endowments of nature rather 
than results of study, — we desire to draw and to im- 
press this distinction : (1) That such intellectual and 
physical qualities as Kean possessed belong to the 
emotional rather than to the poetical phase of the 
drama ; that the opportunities for their employment 
are of rare occurrence and are seldom offered except 
by Shakespeare himself; and that they do not and 
should not be allowed to supersede the earnest study 
of human nature, or that mental and bodily discipline 
which the vocation of the actor demands. (2) That 
whereas an actor like Kean is extremely limited in 
his range of parts — the number of his great charac- 






CHARLES KEMBLE. 175 

ters was six or seven at most, — an actor like Charles 
Kemble, in virtue of his catholic study of art as a 
whole, of his high general cultivation, of his patient 
elaboration of details, is enabled to fill with success 
various and even dissimilar departments of the drama, 
and to combine in one and the same person the en- 
dowments of a great tragic and a great comic actor. 
The example of Kean would be of little service to 
any performer not similarly gifted with himself; the 
example of the Kembles is available even to the 
humblest members of their profession; and so long 
as it was followed and held in honour, so long did 
the stage retain performers capable of doing justice 
to the classical drama of England. 

His performance of Hamlet was perhaps Charles 
Kemble' s highest achievement as an actor. Of the 
relations which it may have borne to his brother's 
impersonation of the philosophic prince we cannot 
speak, but of its superiority to all contemporary 
Hamlets we entertain no doubt. His form, his 
voice, his demeanour, his power of expressing senti- 
ment, his profound melancholy, his meditative repose, 
were all strictly within the range of his physical and 
intellectual endowments, and had all been anxiously 
trained up to the highest point of precision and har- 
mony. His performance of this arduous character 
indeed left nothing to desire except that occasionally 
the harmony of the execution had been broken by the 
disturbing forces of passion. Nothing could exceed 



176 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

his picture of loneliness of soul as he stood encircled 
by the Court of Denmark; what a gleam of joy 
beamed forth in his welcome of Horatio ! now at 
least he has one faithful counsellor and friend ; he is 
no longer all alone. Nothing was ever more exqui- 
site or touching than his " Go on, I follow thee/' to 
the Ghost. Perfect love had cast out fear ; faith pre- 
vailed over doubt; he will go, if need be, to the 
bourne of death and the grave : he will dive into the 
heart of this great mystery, but not in the spirit of 
despair, or at the summons of revenge, or in bravery, 
or in stoical defiance, but in the strength and in the 
whole armour of filial love. We have seen actors 
who fairly scolded their father's spirit, and others 
who quailed before it; but, except in Charles Kem- 
ble, we have never seen one whose looks and tones 
accorded with the spirit of that awful revelation of 
the prison-house and the concealed crime and its 
required purgation, and expressed at once the sense 
of woe endured, anticipated, and stretching onward 
through a whole life. In this scene, so acted, the 
classic and romantic drama melt into one; it is 
Orestes hearing the hest of Apollo, and it is the 
Christian hero, scholar, and soldier standing on the 
isthmus of time and eternity. Again, in the beautiful 
scene with Ophelia, in which the great depths of 
Hamlet's soul are broken up, and madness and love 
gush forth together like a torrent swollen by storms, 
with what exquisite tenderness of voice did Charles 



CHARLES KEMBLE. 177 

Kemble deliver even the harsh and bitter words of 
reproach and self- scorning. Hfs forlorn and piteous 
look seemed labouring to impart the comfort which 
he could not minister to himself. Every mode or 
change of expression and intonation came with its 
own burden of anguish and despair. Filial love at 
one entrance was quite shut out ; his mother was for 
him no longer a mother ; albeit not a Clytemnestra, 
yet, like her {jjLrjrrjp a/jLrjrcop) , the wife of an iEgisthus 
— no more shelter for the weary on that maternal 
bosom; childhood snapt rudely from manhood; the 
earliest and holiest fountain of love dried up for ever. 
And as yet the dregs of the cup have not been drained. 
The love stronger than the love of " forty thousand 
brothers" must also be cast off, at least as to all out- 
ward seeming ; and the arrow which has pierced his 
own heart be planted in Ophelia's also. Seeing 
Charles Kemble enact this scene we have often mar- 
velled how the Ophelias who played with him resisted 
the infection of his grief. But we must not forget, in 
thus reviving our recollections of a great artist, that 
descriptions of acting are for the most part like pic- 
tures to the blind or music to the deaf, or as when a 
man beholds his face in a glass, and straightway the 
image of it passes away. To those who remember 
Charles Kemble's impersonations, and who studied 
them with a diligent and reflecting spirit, we shall 
appear probably to have traced with feeble lines and 
dim colours a portrait whose form and tints are yet 

i 3 



178 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

living and fresh in remembrance, and will revive as 
often as Shakespeare's pages are laid open. To those 
on the other hand who have never witnessed his acting, 
we must seem even less expressive, seeking to embody 
that which by its proper nature has long ago dislimned 
and left not a trace behind. Yet it is much to have 
seen even what we cannot delineate to others ; and to 
convey at least the impression that it was good, har- 
monious, and beautiful exceedingly. Nor are we un- 
aware that in the foregoing attempts to record our 
own impressions we have passed over many examples 
of his skill or genius, not less worthy of mention than 
those which we have recounted. He restored Mercu- 
tio to his proper position as a humorous, high-minded, 
and chivalrous gentleman, such as in its most palmy 
days maintained the honour of Verona, and figured 
in Titian's pictures, or in Villani's pages, ages before 
the Spaniard, the Gaul, or the Austrian, pressed down 
with armed heel the beauty of ' ' fair Italy." To Pe- 
truchio he gave back his self-possession and good- 
humour ; in Mr. Kemble's hands he was no " ancient 
swaggerer," liable to six weeks' imprisonment for his 
bullyings and horse whippings. And neither last nor 
least in the catalogue of his impersonations — although 
it is the last we can afford space to enumerate — Or- 
lando in Ardennes, the very top and quintessence of 
woodland chivalry. Fourteen years have passed away 
since Charles Kemble's final retirement from the 
stage. Virtually he had withdrawn from his profes- 



CHARLES KEMBLE. 179 

sion in the winter of 1837, but in the spring of 1840 
he consented, at the command of her Majesty, to re- 
tread for awhile the scenes of his former triumphs. 
Among other characters he performed, at Covent 
Garden Theatre, Don Felix, Mercutio, Benedick, and 
Hamlet. He remained on the boards long enough to 
witness important changes, if not an absolute decline 
in the art to which his life had been devoted. He 
saw its professors, instead of being collected in strong 
companies, and disciplined and matured by judicious 
training and collective practice, dispersed over a wide 
area of theatres, where talents of the first order found 
no congenial employment, and second-rate actors were 
able to achieve applause easily. He witnessed the 
almost entire relegation of the classical drama to 
theatres which had hitherto been the haunts of melo- 
drama and buffoonery, and the staple productions 
of these houses, by an inverse process of migra- 
tion, transferred to the politer regions of the Metro- 
polis. He had indeed survived the days of poetic and 
chivalrous delineation ; and himself, the limitary co- 
lumn of a past age, had come down to the days when 
the theatres rested their popularity upon plays and 
plots which combined extravagance of incident with 
questionable ethics, and the manager relied more upon 
his scene-painter and his upholsterer than upon his 
actors. In his younger days Charles Kemble had 
been approved by audiences composed of the refined, 
the accomplished, and the judicious; in his latter years 



180 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

the theatre had ceased to attract these classes gene- 
rally, because it no longer afforded the means of in- 
tellectual entertainment. We are inclined to think, 
at least we would fain hope, that a portion of this 
night has passed away. We possess indeed no longer 
well-appointed companies and few actors capable of 
answering to the demands of the higher tragedy or 
comedy. But we have among us, though still dis- 
persed, and thereby deprived of the advantages of co- 
operation, no inconsiderable number of accomplished 
actors, who would, in their degrees, have earned them- 
selves a name in any period of the stage-history. We 
have play-writers, too, though their number be small, 
who, inspired with an honest purpose, may yet do 
much at once to improve the actor in his art, and 
elevate the audience in their taste and perceptions. 

We should not be rendering full justice to the me- 
mory of Charles Kemble were we to omit mentioning 
his exertions in the cause of the historical drama by 
restoring to it, or affording it for the first time, its 
proper scenery and costume. His brother had ex- 
punged much of the neglect and barbarism in these 
matters which had disgraced the stage of Betterton, 
Quin, and Garrick. He had rescued Othello from 
his footman's garb, Macbeth from his brigadier's 
uniform, and Brutus and Coriolanus from their sur- 
plices and slippers. But the younger Kemble went 
many steps further ; and in his representations of the 
Moor of Venice, King John, and Henry IV., put upon 



CHARLES KEMBLE. 181 

the stage the senators and captains of the Signory, 
and the Barons of England, even in the very garb 
worn by them when their Dukes wedded the Adriatic, 
or Hotspur and Worcester fought at Shrewsbury. 
His "revivals" have indeed been eclipsed; but the 
drama owed as much to Charles Kemble a genera- 
tion ago, as it now owes, for the splendour and pro- 
priety of its historical accompaniments, to Mr. Ma- 
cready, Mr. Phelps, or even Mr. Charles Kean. 

Hitherto we have considered Charles Kemble in 
his public capacity alone ; but he was too remarkable 
as a man and as a member of refined and intellectual 
society to be regarded merely under his aspects as an 
actor. In our account of him in his professional re- 
lations we have indeed anticipated many of his indi- 
vidual qualities. His intellectual powers are presumed 
in his ability to conceive and impersonate the highest 
order of dramatic character ; he who is competent to 
embody poetic creations must necessarily possess no 
ordinary share of the imaginative faculty itself. He 
who is able to analyze, combine, and reproduce the 
fine and subtle elements of Shakespearian life, cannot 
have studied either universal or specific human nature 
with an unlearned eye, without exerting, and that in 
no common degree, the perceptive and logical powers 
of the understanding. His fine and cultivated taste 
was displayed in the grace of his manners, in his noble 
demeanour, and in the skill with which he enlisted 
the arts in the service of the drama. But apart from 



182 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

his profession, Charles Kemble's acquirements in lite- 
rature were considerable. He spoke fluently and 
with elegance several modern languages ; he was well 
versed in the masterpieces of their literature. Al- 
though not perhaps a deep classical scholar, he was 
familiar with the best writers of ancient Rome ; and 
as the amusement of his declining years and compa- 
rative seclusion, he renewed his early knowledge of 
Greek, and prosecuted its difficult study with the zeal 
and energy of an aspirant for University honours. 
Like his brother, and indeed like his family generally, 
he derived from nature linguistic faculties of the first 
quality. Had John Kemble not been the greatest 
actor of his day, he would most probably have been 
among its very foremost philologists, as the notes he 
has left upon the subjects of his various reading abun- 
dantly evince. And these philological powers were 
shared by his brother. The labour he bestowed upon 
the technicalities of the Greek grammar was to him 
a labour of love. With half the amount of toil he ex- 
pended upon the dry, and to most people intolerably 
minute, details of its accidence, he might have at- 
tained facility in reading Homer, Xenophon, or Euri- 
pides. But he would dive to the very roots before he 
indulged in the luxury of the fruit or flowers; and a cer- 
tain air of abstraction observable in his looks, was often 
owing to the circumstance that, in his walks or while 
seemingly unoccupied, he was carefully going through 
in his memory some knotty paradigma, or defining 



CHARLES KEMBLE. 183 

for the twentieth time the precise import of the Greek 
particles. Art, and the department of sculpture es- 
pecially, he had made the subject of earnest study — 
in some measure perhaps as auxiliary to his own pro- 
fession, but also from more catholic and higher no- 
tions. Winckelmann himself might have been proud 
of a pupil who appreciated the beauty of ancient 
sculpture with a zest and discernment scarcely infe- 
rior to his own. In both his literary and artistic ac- 
quirements, Charles Kemble's sphere of observation 
had been greatly enlarged by extensive travels — at a 
time when travelling was neither so usual nor so easy 
as it has since become — and by constant communica- 
tion with intelligent and accomplished artists, British 
and foreign. His house indeed was at all times the 
resort of persons distinguished in art and literature ; 
and rarely did they encounter a host more capable of 
estimating their common or particular excellencies, or 
who entered with a more cordial interest into their 
respective pursuits. 

Distinguished by a courtesy of demeanour, even in 
days more courteous than our own, Charles Kemble 
transmitted to the present age the express image of 
the English gentleman of the past generation — of the 
gentlemen whom Reynolds painted, and of whom 
Beauclerc was the sample and representative. He 
was indeed not less formed to delight and instruct 
private society than to be the mould of high breeding 
and the glass of refined manners on the stage. In 



184 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

his later years his own social enjoyments were much 
impeded by deafness, and by the recurrence of a pain- 
ful disorder. But neither privation nor pain diminished 
the urbanity of his address or the general sweetness 
and serenity of his temper. With a shrewd percep- 
tion of character, he was lenient in his judgment of 
men and their opinions. He was slow to censure and 
swift to forgive; and more inclined to make allowance 
for error than prone to detect imperfections. 

In the long period of days allotted to him, Charles 
Kemble had both mingled much in society and marked 
its features with a learned eye. His fund of anecdotes 
was inexhaustible, and his stories derived as much 
grace and point from his mode of relating them as 
from their intrinsic pith and moment. It is much 
to be regretted that he did not write a volume of 
reminiscences. The arc of his experience stretched 
from the days of Burke and Sheridan to the present 
moment ; for at every period of his life he had sought 
the society of his elders and courted the intimacy of 
men younger than himself. 

Charles Kemble has departed from us in the fulness 
of days, and attended by the respectful affection of a 
numerous circle of friends. His name will endure as 
long as the records of the stage retain their interest, 
and wherever the genius of the actor is held in ho- 
nour. But it is the condition, twin-born with the 
nature of his powers and the demands of his art, that 
he who in his day reaps the first harvest of popularity, 



CHARLES KEMBLE. 185 

is, after that day has passed, the soonest forgotten in 
all but — Name. Yet he is not without compensation 
for the ephemeral nature of his efforts and triumphs. 
If neither the pencil nor the chisel have power to 
perpetuate the effects which once electrified multi- 
tudes — if the flashes of his genius be 

" All perishable ; like the electric fire, 
They strike the frame, and as they strike expire : 
Incense too pure a bodied flame to bear, 
Its perfume charms the sense, then blends with air;" 

yet, on the other hand, while the painter, the sculptor, 
and the poet are generally compelled to expect from 
the future their full meed of honour, the recompense 
of the actor is awarded to himself; he enjoys the 
fulness of his fame, and is at once the inheritor and 
witness of his own triumphs. To no one but the 
actor is it given to speak at once to so many feel- 
ings, to move and permeate so vast a mass of human 
passions; to impart pleasure, enlightenment, and in- 
struction to so many delighted auditors. He is the 
interpreter of the arts to the many : he holds the keys 
of sorrow and mirth. It is his voice, or gesture, or 
look, which has filled the eyes of crowded spectators 
with gentle tears, or has elicited from them bursts of 
genial laughter. But for him, poetry might have 
been dumb and painting meaningless to many men 
and many minds. He is the merchant who brings 
the gold of Ophir and eastern balsams within reach 
of those whose abode is far removed from the regions 



186 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

where Nature has exerted her most subtil and strange 
alchemy. 

The place of Charles Kemble in his profession, 
though long vacant, has never been supplied ; nor is 
it probable that it ever will, for he combined in an 
unusual proportion intellectual powers with natural 
gifts; the void which his decease has made in the 
circle of his friends is as little likely to be filled up, 
for he united all that is pleasant in man with princi- 
ples and virtues of "sterner stuff." In contributing 
our mite to the final Plaudite of Charles Kemble we 
will repeat the challenge of the greatest orator of 
Rome, uttered upon the decease of Rome's greatest 
actor : " Quis nostrum tarn animo agresti ac duro fuit 
ut Roscii morte nuper non commoveretur ? qui cum 
esset senex mortuus, tamen propter excellentem artem 
ac venustatem videbatur omnino mori non debuisse." 



187 



THE DRAMA, PAST AND PRESENT/ 



The production of one of Shakespeare's plays with 
all the accessories of modern decoration, has become 
almost an annual event at the Princess's and Sadler's 
Wells Theatres. The late winter season did not ex- 
haust the attractions of ' Pericles/ and the present 
summer season will probably expire before ' Henry 
VIII/ has ceased to " draw." We do not profess to 
know whether the speculation is a remunerative one 
to the respective managers of those theatres, nor do 
we indeed wish to combine calculation of profits 
either with the laudable enterprise of Mr. Kean 
and Mr. Phelps, or with the great dramas which 
they present yearly to the public. We trust that 
they are duly compensated for their pains, risk, and 
cost ; such labourers are fully worthy of their hire. 
Whether these representations be remunerative or 
not, they are highly honourable to both these gentle- 
men, and entitle them to a name and station among 

* Eeprinted from 'Fraser's Magazine,' July 1855. 



188 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

the ablest and most intellectual conductors of our 
National Drama. 

We propose to regard this annual event from a 
more independent point of view than the mere thea- 
trical interests involved in it. It is, if it has any 
significance, a test of the dramatic character of the 
age itself. For each reproduction suggests the ques- 
tion, Do the managers employ all this care and cost 
upon Shakespeare because the public regard him as 
the roof and crown of dramatic poets, or because, 
from the historical interest and amplitude of his 
plays, they coincide better than any inferior creations 
of the playwright with the present taste for scenical 
pomp and circumstance ? On this issue rests the 
main question of Shakespearian revivals. 

We will commence with the earlier of the present 
year's Shakespearian representations. The purely 
dramatical interest of ' Pericles, Prince of Tyre/ is 
inferior to its poetical merits. It is less a play than 
a superb romance in dramatic form. It has been 
suggested, and we think with great probability, that 
Shakespeare, in this late child of his ever-teeming 
fancy, was making an experiment upon some new and 
untried species of dramatic poetry, — a species which 
should more intimately combine than had ever been 
done before the romantic with the classical drama. 
As regards the scene, it is laid almost entirely in that 
rich and beautiful region which connects Europe with 
Asia, and which listened to the first articulate sounds 



THE DRAMA, PAST AND PRESENT. 189 

of the Grecian Muse. As regards the characters, 
they present themselves under Greek designations, yet 
with the attributes of chivalry and romance. Pericles 
is a Greek Paladin ; he is the successful champion at 
a tournament, not the victor at Pythian or Olympic 
games ; he worships indeed in the temple, and con- 
sults the Oracle of the Ephesian Diana, but his sen- 
timents are those of a Christian knight, and his deeds 
resemble those of the heroes of the ' Mort d' Arthur/ 
rather than those of the Iliad. To what great issues 
Shakespeare might eventually have wrought dramas of 
the Periclean kind we cannot tell. It is his first and 
only essay in this species; and it differs essentially 
from his other historical plays, whether derived from 
Euglish or Roman annals. 

This composite character however renders l Peri- 
cles 5 less effective as an acting play. The story does 
not culminate strongly nor rapidly : a more than 
usual license is taken by the poet as regards space 
and time ; and, properly speaking, it is rather a series 
of dramas connected by the principal character, than 
a dramatic action with its rightful origin, progress, 
and denotement. ' Pericles ' indeed is not much un- 
like one of Plutarch's Lives put on the stage. In 
proportion however to its romantic rather than its 
dramatic qualities was its fitness for decoration. We 
have never witnessed any representation in which 
the adjuncts of the scene were so completely justi- 
fied and in place. They did not overlay nor inter- 



190 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

fere with the proper action of the piece ; the acting 
indeed melted itself into the spectacle, and formed 
with it an harmonious whole. The indwelling soul 
of the poetry was sensibly felt throughout as sustain- 
ing but not impeded by its pictorial accompaniment. 
It scarcely mattered whether the declamation of the 
verse were good or bad; there was a noble picture 
with a still nobler comment ; never, in our opinion, 
have the modern resources of decoration been more 
appropriately employed than on this drama. The 
eye was charmed, even if the heart were not touched, 
by the spectacle presented to it. 

With the latter Shakespearian representation at the 
Princess's, the case is altogether reversed, and the 
question again arises — how far the historical plays of 
the poet are illustrated or encumbered by the art of 
the painter and the dress-maker. Before however we 
enter upon this question, we must pay our tribute to 
the manager for having omitted nothing which it was 
in his power to obtain and present in the way of 
adjunct. Regarded as a spectacle, c Henry VIII.' as 
represented at the Princess's Theatre, is deserving all 
praise. The scenery, costume, and groupings are 
equally correct and beautiful, and this noble drama, 
so far as regards its accessories, has never been so 
worthily represented. 

The so-called trial scene of this play is familiar 
to many who have never witnessed a representation 
of it, through Harlowe's celebrated picture of Mrs. 



THE DRAMA, PAST AND PRESENT. 191 

Siddons and John Kemble as the Queen and the Car- 
dinal. Mr. Kean however has given a more correct 
representation of the Court as it really sat. In the 
picture, the King presides and the Cardinals sit below 
the steps of the royal dais. On the stage, at the 
Princess's Theatre, the Cardinals, as Lords of Ap- 
peal, more properly occupy the higher seat, while 
Henry and Katharine, as appellant and respondent, 
occupy chairs to the right and left of the consistorial 
throne. This is a decided improvement on the former 
arrangement ; but we are not disposed to be equally 
content with the substitution of a panoramic view of 
the Thames, from the Palace of Westminster to Wool- 
wich, for the animated scene in the Council-chamber, 
where the sturdy King rebukes the smooth-tongued 
Bishop of Winchester. As the representative of bluff 
King Hal was by no means incompetent to the cha- 
racter, we cannot understand the policy. of this re- 
trenchment. It is a costly sacrifice to mere specta- 
cular effect. 

But the very skill and happiness with which this 
drama has been set upon the stage suggests the ques- 
tion, whether there remains sufficient appreciation in 
the audiences of the day for the higher forms of the 
drama, apart from the pomp and circumstance of de- 
coration. And l Henry VIII.' is a fair test of the 
relations between a taste for the drama and a mere 
relish for its accessories. We are not aware whether, 
before Mr. Phelps was hardy enough to make the at- 



192 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

tempt, c Pericles ' had ever been represented. Be that 
as it may, that drama was most effectually aided by 
the frame in which it was exhibited. But ' Henry 
VIII.' has been so frequently enacted as to deserve 
the appellation of a ' ' stock-piece." It was performed 
by Macready, Young, Henderson, and Kemble, with 
all due attention to historical circumstance and cos- 
tume, though with less scrupulous care than Mr. 
Kean has now bestowed upon it. It was enacted 
by Garrick's and Betterton's companies with no 
thought of propriety at all, and its original repre- 
sentation was probably even still more rude. Yet, 
under all circumstances, c Henry VIII/ has been a 
favourite with the public, whether it has been aided 
by the scene-painter and the antiquary, or whether it 
has been left to the uninformed caprice of the mana- 
ger and the contents of the property-room. We may 
therefore ask fairly, whether the play owes its present 
attractions to the splendour and appropriateness of its 
scenery and dresses, or whether unadorned it would 
have proved equally acceptable to the spectators who 
now throng to it ? 

Of all the historical plays of Shakespeare, ' Henry 
VIII / is perhaps the one which in the highest degree 
justifies and rewards the modern passion for decora- 
tion. The entire scene of the drama lies in the court 
and palace of the King. Its actors are the supreme 
rulers, pontiffs, and magnates of the land, therein re- 
sembling most nearly the first play of the historical 



THE DRAMA, PAST AND PRESENT. 193 

series, ' King John/ Moreover, the Court and age of 
the Tudors was unprecedented in their pomp and 
splendour. It was a royal, a feudal, and a learned 
age combined in one. There was however a marked 
difference between its royalty, feudality, and learning, 
and those of the era of Richard II. Under that feeble 
but by no means illiterate monarch, the lighter graces 
of literature were in vogue. Chaucer and Gower and 
Froissart were among the king's favourites : they pre- 
sented him with their amatory and courtly verses — 
with their romantic and chivalrous tales. But the 
Muses of the Tudor Court were altogether of a graver 
mood. Wyatt and Surrey had imbibed the tender 
melancholy of Petrarch more than the mingled hu- 
mour and pathos of Boccaccio, and these " sad poets" 
by no means represented the fashionable learning of 
their day. The King was a school-divine; the solemn 
and sonorous language of Rome was the common 
language of authors. Henry relished a theological 
quarrel as fully as he did a wrestling-match or the 
bear-garden: his advisers were cardinals and arch- 
bishops ; he did not shrink from the subtleties of the 
schoolmen, or the canon-law. All around him, from 
the conclave to the masque, was full of state and so- 
lemnity; and the wealth which his father had be- 
queathed, or which the spoil of the monasteries af- 
forded him, was lavished upon external adornments. 

Schlegel has carelessly asserted that "' Henry VIII.' 
has somewhat of a prosaic appearance." Had the critic 



194 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

ever read attentively the "Prologue" to the drama? 
The author therein indicates no prosaic intention; 
on the contrary, he prepares his audience for unusual 
stateliness and passion. He excludes the comic ad- 
juncts of the dramas immediately preceding. He 
professes an almost historical veracity : he proclaims 
that he is about to make unwonted demands upon 
their pity. 

" I come no more to make you laugh : things now 
That bear a weighty and a serious brow, 
Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe, 
Such noble scenes as cause the eye to flow, 
We now present. . . . 
Therefore, for goodness' sake, as you are known 
The first and happiest hearers of the town, 
Be sad, as we would make ye : think ye see 
The yery persons of our noble story 
As they were living ; think you see them great, 
And followed with the general throng and sweat 
Of thousand friends ; then, in a moment, see 
How soon the mightiness meets misery ! 
And if you can be merry then, I '11 say, 
A man may weep upon his wedding-day." 

This surely is no preparation for "a prosaic" tra- 
gedy. The excellent critic indeed seems to have 
nodded before he had completed his survey of the 
great round and compass of Shakespeare's historical 
tragedies. 

Let us examine for a moment the entire arch of 
Shakespeare's historical drama. The consideration 
of the series will enable us to understand better the 
actual and the relative position of f Henry VIII.' 



THE DRAMA, PAST AND PRESENT. 195 

In f King John/ feudalism and the Church are the 
assessors if not the co-rivals of the monarchy. The 
crown is but an ampler coronet : the King trembles 
before the words of a priest. The public and warlike 
events of the time are set forth with solemn pomp, 
the better to conceal a central void of corruption. 
The King, though royal in his bearing, is essen- 
tially false and mean in his nature, and would be 
utterly contemptible did he stand alone in his base- 
ness. But his brother-monarch is little less insincere 
than himself; and the nobles, lay and clerical, are 
little better than this pair of kings. William Long- 
sword alone exhibits the qualities of a true nobleman; 
he alone takes no part in the hollow truce ; he alone 
remains by the side of Constance on her throne of 
sorrow. Of this maze of intrigue, Faulconbridge is 
the chorus and interpreter. He neither possesses, nor 
affects to possess, high principles; his fortune is to be 
made ; he has gained one step by accepting the bar 
sinister as a Plantagenet : he looks to ascend higher 
by playing off one gamester against another. Com- 
modity, as he candidly informs us, is his lord, and he 
will worship it ; and we respect his candour, though 
we cannot say much for his disinterestedness. 

In this the earliest in the chronological order of 
history, though not of composition, among Shake- 
spear e's historical plays, we are made to feel the ex- 
istence of a power superior to both the throne and 
the factions of the nobles. The banner of the Church 

k 2 



196 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

is still in the van of earthly policies, prompts or se- 
conds every temporal intrigue, and is the gainer in 
every collision. In ' Henry VIII.' the Church, at 
first splendid and triumphant, is in the end van- 
quished and humiliated ; in ' King John' her autho- 
rity is paramount, and disobedience to her hests, whe- 
ther by the English or French, is followed by defeat 
and disgrace. 

In ' Richard 11/ we encounter a new phase of mon- 
archy. The spiritual power is altogether in the back- 
ground, not because her might has already waned, 
but because the controversy in hand needs not her 
interference. More than one hundred years have 
elapsed since the reign of John. In that interval the 
power of the nobles has been enfeebled, a succession 
of victories over the French and the Scots have ren- 
dered the Crown popular, and the wearer of it feels so 
confident in his title and his strength, that he can 
afford recklessly to gamble both of them away. The 
catastrophe and the moral compensation are produced 
as much by an inward change in Richard himself, as 
by external events. Amid all his follies and extrava- 
gances he has a noble kingly nature, awaiting only 
the purification of sorrow to resume its original lustre. 
He has profoundly disgusted his nobles ; he has cut 
away the props of his throne ; nor until it is tottering 
beneath him does he become aware of the dignity or 
duties of his station, or eager for either the love or 
respect of his people. Nor does he fall so much by 



THE DRAMA, PAST AND PRESENT. 197 

violence as by fraud. The usurpation of the crown 
has been long completed before it is publicly avowed. 
Bolingbroke acts as a king, and his adherents regard 
him as such, although all the while he bruits it abroad 
that he has returned from exile merely to demand his 
birthright, and the removal of abuses. The feudal 
brilliance of the age, so prominent in f King John/ is 
displayed in ' Richard 11/ in the earlier scenes alone. 
After that bright and stirring dawn the day is over- 
cast, and sets in grief and masterless passion. 

The key-note which is sounded in the first play of 
this historical series is scarcely audible again in the 
trilogy devoted to the life and acts of Henry V., — 
for that monarch is evidently Shakespeare's favourite 
hero in English history, and the principal character 
of the dramas in which he appears. The ecclesiastical 
power in these plays, as well as in the earlier- written 
triad of c Henry VI./ is little more than the instru- 
ment of the secular, and has little state or dignity of 
its own. In { Richard III./ again, the stir and strife 
of the great feudal houses are on the wane. The old 
aristocracy is jealously combating with the upstart 
nobility of the Woodvilles, and the last heir of the 
princely line of York serves his faction, no less than 
his own ambition, by bringing them to the block. A 
reign is then passed over, for although Ford, in his 
' Perkin Warbeck' has skilfully selected one episode 
from it as suited to the stage, the general sway of 
Henry VII. was too peaceable and merely political 



198 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

to afford proper nutriment for the historical drama. 
With the accession of his son, however, a new epoch 
begins, an epoch springing in lusty youth and vigour 
from the prosaic level of the preceding reign. The 
civil wars were at an end; the present heir of the Red 
and the White Roses was unquestioned in his title to 
the throne; the territorial magnates had become a 
court noblesse, and Henry VIII., under the politic 
guidance of his Cardinal minister, combined almost 
despotic power with a large measure of his people's 
love. 

As the conclusion of this unrivalled series of his- 
tory in dramatic form, we may expect to find in 
' Henry VIII.' a repetition and resumption of the 
main elements of the preceding plays. If we are 
right in conjecturing that the poet intended to con- 
nect them by some common and pervading features, 
the harmony of art will require that between the first 
and the last there shall be some points of near rela- 
tion, as well as of direct antagonism. And accord- 
ingly we find both affinity and opposition in ' King 
John' and in ' Henry VIII. ' The King is no longer 
ruled by the Church, but he rules through an ec- 
clesiastic; the nobles are no longer at variance with 
the Crown, but cluster around and contribute to its 
splendour. The old feuds indeed have not burned 
out. The old nobility cannot stomach the parvenu 
Wolsey ; the lay lords are impatient of the influence 
of the spiritual; and the latter enlist in their ser- 



THE DRAMA, PAST AND PRESENT. 199 

vice men whom they have raised from obscurity. 
For the first time also in this historical panorama, 
we meet with the Commons of England; not indeed 
distinctly limned, yet not obscurely indicated. In 
' Henry VI. ' we have Jack Cade only, and his Jac- 
querie. Bolingbroke indeed doffs his bonnet to the 
multitude, but it is with Absalom's purpose of win- 
ning adherents. But Henry IV. was raised to the 
throne by the Percies and Worcesters, and not by 
their untitled adherents ; and Richard III. courts the 
citizens of London rather that he may have the 
pretext of a popular cry in his favour than because 
the voice of the Common Hall was as powerful as his 
men-at-arms. In ( Henry VIII/ however we hear of 
the "grieved Commons;" of oppressive taxation; of 
grinding Commissions ; of dangers from popular dis- 
content ; of unmannerly language — 

" Such which breaks 
The sides of loyalty, and almost appears 
In loud rebellion." 

Perhaps the plastic power and tact of Shakespeare 
are more conspicuous in this than in any other play 
of the historical series. Its elements, to any inferior 
hand, are ungenial.* No great controversy is involved 
in its action, like that of the Roses ; no overwhelming 
catastrophe, like that of ' King John' or ' Richard II.;' 
no sudden metamorphosis, like that of ' Henry V.;' 
no fierce Machiavellian spirit, informing the whole, 
as in ' Richard III.' The comic element is nearly 



200 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

excluded : the fall of Buckingham and of Wolsey, the 
wrongs of Katharine, are not relieved by glimpses of 
the squirearchy of Gloucestershire, or revellings at 
the Boar's Head in Eastcheap. The incidents indeed 
are juridical. Buckingham is tried by the Court of 
High Commission, and convicted on the evidence of 
his steward ; Wolsey' s ruin is wrought partly by the 
King's wrath at the law's delay, and partly by the 
King's passion for Anne Boleyn; and Katharine is 
discrowned on a plea cognizable by the Court of 
Arches. Yet the leaden ore of 'Hall's Chronicle/ 
from which Shakespeare has mainly derived his dra- 
matic incidents, is transmuted by his potent elixir 
into gold as unalloyed as that of the ' Midsummer 
Night's Dream/ He has turned to the highest poetry 
the prosaic dealings of courts and the world. And 
his tact is the more admirable from the circumstance 
that Queen Elizabeth was among the spectators of 
the play. There was much offence in the matter, if 
not strictly looked to, and wisely handled. On the 
one hand dramatic truth and consistency were to be 
preserved, on the other the royal anger was to be 
dreaded. Yet, by the royal bearing of Henry, by his 
festivity, his reliance at first on Wolsey, afterwards 
on Cranmer ; his readiness to redress the Commons' 
grievances, and his show of justice in curbing the 
pride and retrenching the power of the Cardinal — he 
has produced a picture which even a daughter could 
applaud. Nevertheless, to the intelligent observer, he 



THE DRAMA, PAST AND PRESENT. 201 

has drawn Henry as faithfully as Holbein himself. He 
has represented him as he was actually : haughty and 
self-willed, voluptuous and unfeeling ; capricious alike 
in bestowing and in revoking favours; possessing a 
rude sense of justice, and often only revengeful when 
affecting to be just. He has enlisted our entire sym- 
pathy for the victims, — for Buckingham, the Queen, 
and even the Cardinal : he has kept out of sight the 
fatal vanity of Anne Boleyn, and represented her as 
irresistibly beautiful, and yet as regards her ill-fated 
mistress perfectly blameless. Finally, after the tragic 
passion of the scene has passed away, and "poor 
Edward Bohun," and Wolsey, and the Queen, are 
released from their earthly career, he has imparted to 
this sad and stately drama a hopeful and triumphant 
close. Cranmer, the representative of the new opi- 
nions, connects the era of Henry with that of Eliza- 
beth, and although his prophetic vision of the great 
Queen's reign is not penned by Shakespeare's hand, 
there is enough in his own unquestioned work to 
suggest the proper consummation. 

With an opulence peculiar to himself, Shakespeare, 
in fact, in ' Henry VIII./ has included and interwoven 
three tragical stories, — the fall of Buckingham, the 
fall of Wolsey, and the more lingering death of 
Katharine. Of these, the fall of Wolsey, and not, as 
Schlegel has stated, the calamities of the Queen, is 
the central object of the group. The Cardinal smites 
Avith a two-edged axe. Buckingham and Katharine 

k 3 



202 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

have each thwarted and offended him : the former he 
strikes down by show of justice and real suborna- 
tion; against the latter he sets in action the ma- 
chinery of the divorce. But this weapon also is two- 
edged, and the great Cardinal is himself struck down 
by it as soon as it has served his purpose with his 
victims. 

In contemplating the play itself we have been car- 
ried away from its present representation. It would 
be interesting, were it possible, to arrive at some con- 
ception of the effect of this drama upon spectators 
who lived before the days of theatrical decoration. 
It requires little stretch of the fancy to conceive 
1 Henry VIIL' enacted in the court-dresses of George 
II., or in the more picturesque costume of the pre- 
ceding century. Cato's flowered gown and lackered 
chair served as well for English as for Roman dramas. 
The age had not grown "picked and curious;" and 
was content to see the players in the ordinary garb 
of well-dressed " persons of quality." But it does 
require some power of imagination to realize a play 
so capable of scenical illustration, performed with no 
other adjuncts than tapestry hangings, and on stages 
little larger than the platform of an ordinary lecture- 
room. The managers of the year 1600 might very 
probably afford priests' vestments for Wolsey and 
Cranmer, and farthingales for the beardless boys 
who "voiced" Katharine and Anne Boleyn at the 
Globe or Bull theatres. But they assuredly were not 



THE DRAMA, PAST AND PRESENT. 203 

at the pains to dress Henry after Holbein's portrait, 
nor to observe a difference between the costume of 
Surrey and the Lord Chamberlain. Nor have we, 
as in some others of Shakespeare's historical dramas, 
any clue among the explanations of the chorus to 
guide us. From the chorus to c Henry V.', as well 
as from an often-cited passage of Sir Philip Sidney's 
( Defence of Poesy/ we may form an adequate no- 
tion of the rudeness of these early representations. 
Shakespeare's Prologues are indeed well worth the 
attention of modern managers. Those in f Henry V.' 
especially, unite epic pomp and solemnity with lyrical 
earnestness, and are intended to remind the specta- 
tors that the grandeur of the actions described can- 
not be developed on a narrow stage, and that they 
must therefore supply from their own imaginations 
the deficiencies of the representation. 

" Four or five most vile and ragged foils, 
Eight ill disposed in brawl ridiculous, 
Disgraced the name of Agincourt." 

' Henry VIII.' was doubtless as inadequately re- 
presented as ' Henry V.,' and the fancy of the spec- 
tators was held in full play through the poverty, or 
rather through the absence, of decoration. 

Of such poverty we have no longer to complain, 
and perhaps have more reason to murmur at our pre- 
sent opulence. For if we in reality succeed in exhi- 
biting the tumult of a great battle, the storming of a 
fort, the splendour of a council-chamber, or the pomp 



204 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

of an ecclesiastical procession, we incur the opposite 
risk of rendering the spectator, by the power of these 
sensible impressions, indifferent to the proper business 
of the scene and those who move upon it. The es- 
sential is sacrificed to the accessory. In this respect 
however the public and the managers have long since 
combined to spoil each other : the one by demanding, 
the other by supplying ornament in excess, as the 
proper instrument of dramatic attraction. Whether 
Timotheus should yield the prize, or both divide the 
blame, is a question which cannot be discussed within 
our present limits. 

It has for some time been a fancy of periodical 
critics to denounce managers of theatres as the worst 
enemies of the dramatic poet. They ring interminable 
changes on translations from the French, on the sacri- 
fice of genius to stage convenience, on the subordi- 
nation of the play- writer to the servants and hand- 
maidens of the scene, and on the jealous exclusion of 
dramas which do not, or cannot, directly minister to 
public caprice or managerial profit. From the speci- 
mens recently afforded of the modern poetical drama, 
we are disposed to think that a very slender propor- 
tion of genuine dramatic ability is excluded from the 
theatre ; and in short, that managers exercise a sound 
discretion for the most part in rejecting the wares 
presented to them. Without regarding these gentle- 
men as judges from whom there is no appeal, we be- 
lieve they know their own business very well, and that 



THE DRAMA, PAST AND PRESENT. 205 

when they make a mistake, it is mostly when some 
piece has been foisted on them, rather than accepted 
by them. No manager in his senses wonld exclude 
such a play as the l Hunchback ' from his theatre, or 
turn indifferently away from a proposal of Messrs. 
Taylor and Keade. Again, no sane manager will be 
caught by the mere literary pretensions of an author, 
or palm on the public a respectable poem, under the 
misconception that it will prove a popular drama. 
The grievance which authors endure from managerial 
prejudice, is, we suspect, of the very slenderest 
amount; and certainly, so far as we are acquainted 
with the "unacted drama," we are satisfied that its 
postponement to the Greek Calends is its only chance 
of escape from popular condemnation. 

A modern pit, indeed, is no longer a bench of ju- 
dicial criticism. That work is performed in a much 
more perfunctory style than it was formerly ; and a 
new play seldom runs the gauntlet of scholars and 
artists assembled in the front rows. There was indeed 
much execrable criticism at a time when the drama 
was a popular amusement; the age itself was con- 
ventional, and admired a good deal, both in writing 
and acting, that would now be insufferably tedious. 
But far astray as our forefathers may have gone in 
the principles of good taste, they at least brought to 
the theatre an antecedent faith and earnestness from 
which we now shrink, or which are diverted to other 
and more permanent phases of art. Society is, in 



206 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

fact, in an adverse position to the drama, not so much 
because literature, on the one hand, partly usurps its 
domain, and partly anticipates its attractions, but also 
because it has reached a period of refinement incom- 
patible with strong and natural emotions. We are 
become, in all that regards the theatre, a civil, similar, 
and impassive generation. To touch our emotions, we 
need not the imaginatively true, but the physically 
real. The visions which our ancestors saw with the 
mind's eye, must be embodied for us in palpable 
forms. If a king dies on the stage, he must suffer 
mortality's last pangs with all the circumstances of a 
death-bed ; the expressive hints and bold outlines of 
our elder playwrights no longer suffice, we must see 
the patient writhe anatomically. We neither believe 
in part, nor prophesy in part ; all must be made pal- 
pable to sight, no less than to feeling ; and this lack 
of imagination in the spectators affects equally both 
those who enact and those who construct the scene. 



207 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS.* 



The subject of Popular Amusements, if we may trust 
to the evidence of book- catalogues, has hitherto been 
very imperfectly discussed. Of histories and treatises, 
indeed, classical or archaeological, there is a sufficient 
supply; what is needed is examination of the question 
in all its bearings, from a social and ethical point of 
view. We desire to know, not so much the form of 
public recreations at different eras and among various 
nations, as the spirit which has actuated them, and 
the effect they have produced upon the character of 
mankind. We would have their physiognomy and 
philosophy more closely scrutinized, especially at the 
present moment, when the topic of public amuse- 
ments seems likely to press itself on the attention of 
those who make and of those who obey the laws. 

In the absence of any leading authority upon a 
question of no ordinary importance, we propose to 
interrogate the past briefly, and to ascertain, as far as 
our means of information and our limits allow, what 

* Reprinted from the 'Westminster Review,' July 1856. 



208 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

have been the expressions, among different nations, of 
their emotions earnest or mirthful ; and what, socially 
or ethically, have been the results of popular amuse- 
ments as delineated in the pages of history. We 
neither attempt nor presume to offer anything beyond 
the most general of surveys, and our object will be 
completely answered, if we succeed in drawing the 
attention of others to the records or the results of the 
spontaneous pastimes that often embody national cha- 
racter more completely than chronicles, state-papers, 
or even works of fiction. 

We do not propose to enter again upon the Sabbath 
controversy, having so recently discussed it. This 
controversy indeed is rather a branch and corollary 
of the problem of public amusements than distinct 
and several in itself. If it be right and expedient to 
reflect whether recreations on one day in the week 
should be supplied or sanctioned, it is equally meet 
and right to consider whether it may not be advisable 
also to provide them for ■ every reasonable interval of 
business. We have laws innumerable for making and 
keeping men grave ; is it impossible to devise others 
which, if they do not make them merry, may at least 
elevate and refine them when disposed of their own 
accord to be so ? Are Governments and statute-books, 
in short, to be always a terror to evil-doers, but never 
able or allowed to render the life of labour more en- 
durable, or the life of leisure more dignified ? 

If an answer to these queries be sought in the 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 209 

statute-books, or theological and ethical treatises, 
during the last two centuries, it will not be favour- 
able to the humanity of legislators or the wisdom of 
divines. "Lex surda et inexorabilis est," says the 
historian of Rome ; and yet the Roman law was by 
no means regardless of the recreations of the people. 
And law is neither more deaf nor more inexorable 
than divinity. Divines, not content with describing 
this world as a world of probation, represent it as one 
of durance also. To be happy, or to seem so, is to 
tread the primrose path of sin. Philosophy taught 
that health of mind was connected with, if not de- 
pendent upon, health of body ; but theology, at least 
such as is expounded from the pulpit or in books, 
seldom if ever teaches anything of the sort : health 
and cleanliness are sublunary considerations savour- 
ing of the earth, and as for cheerfulness, it is not so 
much as to be named in the congregation. Clearly, 
then, as regards popular amusements, no hope is to 
be looked for from the pulpit. Brave old Latimer in- 
deed was of a different way of thinking, and delighted 
in turning his hearers' attention to subjects connected 
with their daily lives and recreations. But preachers 
of his stamp are as rare as able-bodied and able- 
minded bishops; and so far from desiring to send 
home his hearers with renewed interest in their daily 
life, the shepherd dismisses his flock with the assur- 
ance that this is the worst possible of worlds, and 
that the best use we can make of it is to be as un- 



210 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

genial and uncomfortable in it as we can. Nor is the 
flock generally a whit behind the shepherd in its relish 
for discomfort. The more vinegar and gall there 
is in a sermon, the better it is relished; a cheerful 
view of religion, or monitions to cater for body's 
health as well as soul's health, would empty half the 
churches in the United Kingdom. 

Nor are legislators more disposed to look with an 
eye of favour on public recreations than divines. 
Littleton and Coke are as harsh and unsympathizing 
as Calvin and Toplady. "Legislators/' says Sir 
William Blackstone, " have for the most part chosen 
to make the sanction of their laws rather vindicatory 
than remuneratory , or to consist in punishments ra- 
ther than in actual particular rewards. Because, in 
the first place, the quiet enjoyment and protection of 
all our civil rights and liberties, which are the sure 
and general consequence of obedience to the muni- 
cipal law, are in themselves the best and most valua- 
ble of all rewards. Because also, were the exercise of 
every virtue to be enforced by the proposal of parti- 
cular rewards, it were impossible for any State to 
furnish stock enough for so profuse a bounty. And 
further, because the dread of evil is a much more 
forcible principle of human action than the prospect 
of good. For which reasons, though a prudent be- 
stowing of rewards is sometimes of exquisite use, yet 
we find that those civil laws which enforce and enjoin 
our duty, do seldom, if ever, propose any privilege or 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 211 

gift to such as obey the law ; but do constantly come 
armed with a penalty denounced against transgres- 
sors." "We have no quarrel with this theory of re- 
wards and punishments in its proper relations to the 
innocence or guilt of those who live under the law ; 
yet the learned Justice of the Common Pleas has, in 
our opinion, by no means exhausted, and indeed has 
hardly touched on the philosophy of remuneration. 

In whatever light we regard the State, whether as 
a parent regulating his children's actions, and exact- 
ing from them implicit obedience, or as a body of 
trustees appointed by the governed for their own 
good, it has a direct interest in the well-being of its 
members. It is not enough for them to be negatively 
benefited, as Blackstone insists, by the vigilance and 
wisdom of their rulers. Man is not formed to live by 
law alone, any more than he is by bread alone. His 
animal and intellectual faculties alike demand nurture 
and relaxation, and the Government which shuts its 
eyes to the amusements of the people, and considers 
that if life and goods be protected, all its duties are 
performed, beholds only half of its proper functions, 
and performs even that moiety imperfectly. 

For, if work and its fair recompense be a preven- 
tive against crime, occasional leisure and recreation 
are not less good prophylactics in their way, The un- 
bent mind is, at times, in as much peril from tempta- 
tion as the unemployed. Even holidays are tedious, 
unless they interpose one kind of mental or bodily 



212 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

activity for another: and the ale-house is filled as 
much by those who are wearied with doing nothing, 
as by the habitually intemperate. If proof of this 
assertion be required, let the reader accompany us 
for a moment, in imagination, to a village wake, or 
even to the larger assembly of a town-fair. He will 
see there an assemblage of people in better than their 
ordinary attire, and bearing the traces of a recent 
application of soap and water. The smith's sooty 
visage looks scarified by his ablution, and the miller 
and mason are no longer to be detected by their pro- 
fessional hue. If it be Whitsuntide or May-day, 
there is some approach to a Feast of Tabernacles, for 
the booths and skittle-grounds are decked with boughs 
— the nearest approach now to pastoral sentiment in 
England. But, if closely inspected, the whole affair 
has a very business-like aspect. Listen to the con- 
versation of the groups of holiday-makers, and it is 
mostly of a serious cast — of markets and prices among 
the men, of family casualties and scandal among the 
women. Now and then, the children appear a little 
exhilarated by the apparition of Mr. Merry man, or 
the conversation of Mr. Punch. As the afternoon 
wears on, it may be expected that the mirth will be- 
come fast and furious. The contrary is generally the 
case. The men are besotted ; the women are weary, 
and anxious to return home : and, probably, in low 
life as well as in high life, a day's pleasure is one of 
the most truly wearisome in the year. 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 213 

If we may trust to books, such matters were ma- 
naged better in days of yore. Towns and villages 
were isolated from the capital, and from one another, 
by the badness or non-existence of roads : and the 
squire and lord of the manor was really a potentate 
in his own district, and, like other magnates, held his 
courts and levees. The fair was one of his annual 
ceremonies, and he or his family would no more have 
absented themselves from such gatherings, than from 
the family pew on Sundays. "We cannot revert to 
the days of the Bracebridges and De Coverleys, but 
we may well doubt whether, if we have gained in 
wisdom, we have not lost something in social happi- 
ness. Certainly the isolation of classes from each 
other has increased with the facility of locomotion, 
and the wealthy now generally present themselves to 
their humbler neighbours under the grave aspect of 
founders of schools and restorers of churches, instead 
of partakers in their mirth and relaxations. He who 
shall devise a form of popular amusement attractive 
to every grade of society, will merit a civic wreath, as 
well as he who leads forth a colony,, or opens new 
avenues to labour. 

So many obstacles present themselves to this most 
desiderated discovery, that we have not the vanity 
even to suggest either an outline of it, or the direc- 
tion in which it may, perhaps, be found. Our imme- 
diate object is, rather to survey briefly what has been 
the aspect of popular amusements in various nations, 



214 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

and at different epochs of the world, and to consider 
their influence on the character and culture of those 
who devised or delighted in them. From the results 
of an historical survey, some general hints may, per- 
chance, be derived. Of written and monumental re- 
cords there is no scarcity. The recreations of Assyria 
and Egypt are graven on stone, or traced on papy- 
rus : those of Greece and Rome are described by the 
sculptor's chisel and the artist's pencil, in sonorous 
verse and in measured prose. The manuscripts of 
the Middle Ages exhibit, in quaint forms and bright 
colours, the sports of the people ; and, since printing 
became common, the lighter literature of the press 
abounds with details of whatsoever has been the busi- 
ness of the idle, or has lightened the toils of the busy. 
But it seems never to have occurred to any one, that 
popular amusements have an ethical as well as an 
historical or antiquarian aspect, and are an index of 
the national mind, almost if not quite as instructive 
as the records of war, diplomacy, or legislation. 

The amusements of the people in early stages of 
civilization are naturally martial in their character, 
and are mostly reflections of war and the chase. The 
effeminate Lydians are said to have been the inven- 
tors of sedentary games; but the monuments of 
Egypt and Assyria attest the active energies of their 
inhabitants. It has been too hastily assumed that 
common life wore a melancholy aspect among. the 
Egyptians ; and their oppressive ritual and sovereign 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 215 

priesthood have the credit of rendering them spirit- 
less and sad. But the insight which their sculptures 
afford into their interior life, acquits both the people 
and its rulers from this imputation. They had, it is 
true, no theatre like the Greeks, and no circus like 
the Romans : and their religious festivals were not 
diversified, like the Olympian and Pythian games, 
by exhibitions of strength and skill. The life of the 
people however was far from being monotonous. In 
the grottoes of Benihassan, on which the sports and 
pastimes of Egypt are so vividly depicted, we find 
not only representations of martial exercises, but also 
games carried on by men and women, evidently in- 
tended for the amusement of spectators. There are 
jugglers, often females, playing with balls, sometimes 
as many as six at once, and engaged in gymnastical 
exercises, that evince a wonderful control and supple- 
ness of limbs. Many of the contortions exhibited a 
few years since by the Arabs at the London theatres, 
were practised by these Coptic tumblers. In these 
feats, the women are dressed in tight pantaloons. 
The flinging the jereed, in which the Saracens were 
so expert, was an Egyptian pastime; but with this 
difference, that at Granada and Bagdad it was per- 
formed on horseback, whereas in Egypt it was per- 
formed in boats impelled by strong rowers. The 
Thames in the sixteenth century exhibited a similar 
spectacle, and the London 'prentices often disturbed 
the equanimity of sober citizens by hurling or 



216 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

thrusting blunt javelins against their stately barges. 
Professor Anderson might have met with his match 
in Egypt, where the jugglers, were as adroit as 
the wizards; and no Neapolitan at the present day 
plays the game of mora with more eagerness or live- 
lier gesticulations than the Egyptians played at even- 
and-odd. Dice are at least four thousand years old, 
since they have been found, marked in the modern 
manner, at Thebes ; and draughts, coloured green and 
yellow, and arranged in lines along a board, are re- 
presented at Benihassan. It would seem that the 
two latter games were favourites with the Egyptian 
clergy, owing doubtless to the tranquil and medita- 
tive turn of mind required for such pastimes. The 
recreations of Thebes and Memphis did not, like the 
Grecian panegyries, elevate or refine the taste of the 
people ; but neither do they imply either melancholy 
or indolence in either exhibitors or spectators. If we 
are to judge of their disposition by their sculptures, 
we can hardly believe in the existence of a cheerful 
Assyrian. Those aquiline countenances seem to defy 
risus jocosque. We can imagine the Sphinx relaxing 
into a smile, and even Memnon laughing on such 
particular occasions as the Feast of Lamps, when all 
Egypt was on the fiver, and as bousy as a piper. 
There was indeed an essential difference in the lands 
of Cham and Ninus. In the Nile valley, fringed on 
each side by a desert, the population was close packed 
in towns, and the wits of men were sharpened by 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 217 

constant attrition with one another. Provision was 
also plentiful; since the Egyptians generally were 
vegetarians, and leguminous plants grew rapidly in 
the teeming mud of Nilus. Neighbourhood and 
abundance incline people to recreation, and even the 
religious festivals of the calendar were antidotes to 
sadness. Whereas the Assyrian was little more ad- 
vanced in civilization than the pastoral races which 
still occupy Upper Asia. Even his cities, although 
notorious for license and the coarse ostentation of 
wealth, reflected the image of a nomad encampment. 
Vast parks were enclosed within the walls of Babylon, 
and sheep and oxen grazed in multitudes in the heart 
of Nineveh. Beyond their precincts, except in that 
Mesopotamian district called the garden of Chaldsea, 
enormous and arid plains stretched on every side, 
and since vegetation extended but a little beyond the 
banks of the Euphrates, population was scanty, and it 
was often a day's journey from one village to another. 
The character of the people corresponded to that of 
their land. Both the Hebrew and Greek writers 
agree in describing them as a fierce, grave, and vio- 
lent race; with faces like an eagle's, with hair like 
lions, terrible as archers, wasteful as locusts, and 
more to be dreaded than the wolf or the hyena. Their 
sculptures represent them as rending the lion and the 
bear, and surrounded by the symbolisms of a race 
conversant with the hardy life of shepherds — bronzed 
by the morning frost and the noonday sun, tense in 

L 



218 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

fibre, eager of eye, with sinewy chests, and dilated 
nostrils, scenting the battle from afar. It is not 
among such a nation that we should seek for popular 
amusements. On the eastern verge of Asia, we come 
upon a people whom travellers have not unfrequently, 
although inaccurately, compared to the Egyptians. 
The Chinese resemble the inhabitants of the Nile 
valley only in the burdensome character of their ce- 
remonies and in the sluggish permanence of their 
customs. It requires an effort of the imagination to 
picture to ourselves a youthful or a cheerful Chinese. 
From his cradle and swaddling-clothes, he is the slave 
of prescription. The spontaneous impulses of his child- 
hood are repressed by education, and the recreations 
of his manhood are grave, solemn, and ungenial. No 
feeling of the beautiful is apparent in any of his pur- 
suits or productions; he paints, designs, and carves 
as his forefathers did centuries ago ; his demeanour 
and ordinary speech are regulated by strict laws ; and 
what is not written in the books of the wise, is not 
permitted to be done or said without a serious breach 
of law and decorum. There is indeed a certain im- 
pressive grandeur in many of his festivals, in his 
prayers at the tomb of his ancestors, his ever-burning 
lamps, and his reverence for what his teachers have 
prescribed or time has hallowed. But China is not 
the land of cheerfulness : even its amusements bear 
a weighty and a serious brow ; and the land presents 
the aspect which the Greeks attributed to their Hades 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 219 

— a land where all things always seem the same, and 
where the sports and exercises of youth afford no 
pleasure and admit of no variety. Throughout Asia, 
indeed, an air of melancholy prevails which is not 
wholly attributable to the civil or spiritual despotism 
of its rulers and its castes. Man in those regions is 
a weed ; he is dwarfed by the colossal scale on which 
nature works : his religions are ancient, monumental, 
elaborate, and cruel; his philosophy is ascetic and 
contemplative; and his relaxations partake of the 
earnest and sombre genius of his creeds, traditions, 
and institutions. 

It is from the inventive and practical sons of 
Hellas that we must seek for the true theory and 
example* of popular amusements. The Greeks were 4- 
the first to announce the law of education — that it 
should consist in nearly equal proportion of the arts 
which elevate the mind and the exercises which 
strengthen the body. The combination of the mu- 
sical with the gymnastic was first displayed in the 
public games of Greece, and was repeated in the 
daily life of every Grecian commonwealth. So sa- 
lient a feature was this of Hellenic manners, that we 
find Paul of Tarsus drawing from the race- course one 
of his liveliest and most expressive illustrations, and 
Plato preluding so many of his dialogues with refer- 
ences to the palaestra, the stadium, and the sports that 
accompanied the festivals of Pallas, Apollo, and Ceres. 
" All pastimes," says Hoger Ascham, "generally, which 

l 2 



220 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

be joyned with labour and in open place, and on the 
day-lighte, be not only comelie and decent, but verie 
necessarie for a courtly gentleman;" and the Greeks, 
although they admitted a certain coarseness of speech 
and action, which the greater decency or the better 
regulated hypocrisy of modern life prohibits, were, in 
comparison with other contemporary nations, a race 
of " courtly gentlemen." It was deemed discreditable 
for any one above the condition of a slave or a bar- 
barian, to be unable to express himself in society or 
in public with freedom and ease upon any topic of 
discussion : he was deemed awkward and ill- trained 
who could not add to the conviviality of the table by 
song or recitation; and it needed all the fame and 
ingenuity of Themistocles to excuse himself for his 
inability to play on the flute. It was considered un- 
beseeming a citizen to be inexpert in any warlike or 
manly accomplishment, and the Greek admiration for 
physical beauty rendered indispensable the exercises 
that develope the muscles or give precision to the 
eye and the hand. The instincts of the people were 
nurtured by the habits of their daily life. It was for 
women to be sedentary, because, according to the 
erroneous notions of her master, she was a slave. 
But an indolent or invalid man was a prodigy and a 
laughing-stock ; and some of Plato's keenest satire is 
pointed against the self-indulgence of the Sophists 
who sat by the stove and lapped themselves in cloaks 
and blankets. The ceremonials of the Christian 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 221 

Church have, in all ages, commanded the applause of 
the artist and attracted the admiration of the vulgar. 
But the most gorgeous festivals of the Roman and 
Byzantine priesthood are ignoble beside the Olympic 
Games or the Greek Panegyries of Athens and Delos. 
In the one, the symbolisms of religion affect the faith 
or imagination only of the spectators, who gaze, a 
profane herd, upon the drama of the sanctuary, but 
are not permitted to take part in the performance. 
The worship of the Greeks was of a more catholic 
and ennobling kind. No free man was excluded from 
the contests of the arena: the cost of the chariot race, 
indeed, restricted its full enjoyment to the wealthy, 
but, at least in the earlier and better days, the manly 
exercises of the Pentathlon were open to the young, 
the vigorous, and the handsome. Godlike and heroic 
men were esteemed the best exponents of the bounty 
and providence of the gods; and Apollo was venerated 
not only as the giver of light and health, but also 
as the model of manly strength and grace. It was 
a decline both in art and in national feeling, when 
the boxers and wrestlers became merely professional 
artists, trained and dieted like our tumblers and 
prize-fighters to feats of agility and strength, and 
sacrificing the music, i. e. the intellectual portion of 
their abilities, to the gymnastic or physical. The 
Crotoniate Milo, whose stalwart arms could rive an 
oak, or whose brawny shoulders could carry off an 
ox, was deeply versed in the science of Pythagoras, 



222 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

and was applauded by the spectators as the mortal 
representative of the beautiful sons of Leda. The 
religion of the Greeks carefully. watched over three 
principal objects . of petition in the prayers of our 
church; nor was its care limited to verbal petition, 
nor were the worshipers contented with periodical 
acknowledgment that the well-being of man consists 
in a judicious regulation of "mind, body, and estate." 
The mind was cared for by the combination of intel- 
lectual with gymnastic exhibitions ; and the audience 
at Elis or Corinth expected with as much eagerness 
the song in honour of the conqueror, as the feats 
which obtained for him the laurel or parsley coronal. 
The body was regarded as well by the exercises which 
fostered its vigour, grace, and suppleness, as by the 
temperance in all things which whosoever contended 
for the prize must observe. And the estate was also 
an object of solicitude, since temperance and hardi- 
hood are incompatible with luxury and sloth. We 
may affect to smile or sigh at the shallowness or in- 
congruity of the creed of Greece, but we must often 
blush, amid the comparative effeminacy of modern 
manners, at the manlier practice of the worshipers of 
Zeus and Athene. It is needless to expatiate on the 
artistic genius of the Greeks further than to note its 
intimate connection with the physical character of the 
people. The town of Sicyon was probably not more 
extensive than the least of the provincial capitals of 
England, yet it contained, if we may credit Pausanias, 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 223 

more masterpieces of art than at this moment can be 
found in all London. The models of the artist were 
not far to seek. The streets, the market-place, and 
the gymnasium afforded them ; and the long conserva- 
tion of physical beauty which survived the extinction 
of freedom, is to be ascribed to the passion of the 
Greeks for gymnastic discipline. The traces of this 
passion are visible in the latest ages of Hellenic lite- 
rature. Lucian, Plutarch, and Dion Chrysostom 
dwell on the vigour and beauty of the race in their 
time, and generally couple their commendations of na- 
tural graces with allusions to the training schools or 
the public games. The noblest of the Greek writers, 
indeed, deplore the comparative decline of their coun- 
trymen in physical qualities, and ascribe the inferi- 
ority of their contemporaries to departure from the 
hardy habits of their forefathers. Aristophanes con- 
trasts the curled darlings of his time with the big, 
brawny men who fought with the Persians at Salamis 
and Platsea; and Demosthenes taunts his hearers with 
their reluctance to serve their country in the fleet or 
the phalanx. The ancient spirit however did not wholly 
die, until the Hellenic race itself expired under the 
lazy and oppressive despotism of the Byzantine Caesars. 
The games of the hippodrome were no substitute 
for the periodical festivals at Elis and the Isthmus. 
The charioteers of the green and blue factions were 
hirelings ; the body-guards of Justinian and Alexius 
were recruited in Britain and the Rhine-land, and 



2.24 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

the flower of Grecian life drooped and dwindled in the 
unwholesome atmosphere of the Bar and the Church. 
In the national amusements of the Greeks the gym- 
nastic element preponderated, and the proportion is 
just, since it is not desirable that many men should 
devote themselves to literature, while it imports the 
general good that every member of the community 
should, unless physically disabled, be active, healthy, 
and brave. For the musical or intellectual element, 
the Greeks thought that they had provided abun- 
dantly by the Dionysiac festivals ; and assuredly the 
Drama has never assumed a more august and im- 
posing form than it presented yearly at Athens. We 
are not insensible to the ampler and nobler dimen- 
sions of the Romantic Drama as compared with the 
Classical, nor disinclined to admit that in Shake- 
speare's and Calderon's plays a more profoundly re- 
ligious, or rather a more profoundly humane, element 
exists than is to be found in the Oresteia or the 
Antigone. Viewed however in the light of popular 
amusements, the palm must be awarded to the Greek 
Drama. The scrupulousness or superstition of the 
Church has unfortunately divorced the Theatre from 
the ritual or the dogmas of religion; or when they 
have occasionally entered into co-partnership, as in 
the instances of Calderon's l Autos' and Racine's 
scriptural tragedies, the union has been brief, and 
unfavourable to the more popular objects of the 
Drama. The hostility of the Church to the Theatre 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 225 

commenced with the just repugnance of all wise and 
good men to the atrocities of the Roman stage. The 
coarseness and license in which Aristophanes occa- 
sionally indulges would have appeared faint and feeble 
to a Roman inured to the representations at the Me- 
galesian and Floral Games ; and if the libels of Pro- 
copius contain any admixture of truth, the impuri- 
ties of Rome were far surpassed by those of Constan- 
tinople . The antagonism of the Church to the Thea- 
tre was accordingly just in its origin, but it has been 
prejudicial equally to dramatic art and to popular re- 
creation. At the Dionysiac festivals of Greece they 
went hand in hand, — art was ennobled, recreation 
acquired an ethical importance, and the creed of 
the people was presented under the attractive forms 
of solemn and purifying emotions. In the fables of 
CEdipus, Electra, and Antigone, the presence of a 
spiritual power, righting the secret wrongs, appalling 
the guilty, and justifying the innocent, was made 
manifest, nor could any attentive and thoughtful 
spectator depart from the representation of Prome- 
theus without a conviction that the sacrifice of suf- 
fering is not less acceptable to the gods than the sa- 
crifice of action. The Attic Drama was indeed the 
most superb and solemn liturgy of the Hellenic re- 
ligion. The Greeks thus realized in their practice 
nearly every condition involved in the theory of 
popular amusements. They provided for the intel- 
lectual and physical improvement of the people both 

l 3 



226 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

locally and nationally. Their great panegyries were 
common to all who were not barbarians, — i. e. to all 
who traced their ancestry from Pelops, Ion, and the 
Heracleids, or who, though of foreign extraction, 
were admitted — a rare privilege — for some signal 
service into the family of Hellas ; and their local in- 
stitutions catered for the health, instruction, and 
cheerfulness of the several communities. The ci- 
vilization of Christendom has, in some respects, ad- 
vanced beyond that of the Hellenic race. It has 
improved, though it is still very far from apprehend- 
ing, the proper relations and position of women; it 
has generally abolished slavery, although the change 
from myriads of slaves to myriads of paupers is a 
brief step only in the right direction, and is at la- 
mentable variance with the doctrines of a religion 
professing to regard all men as brethren, and wealth 
as dross. It has established munificent public chari- 
ties, which were known in a rude form only to anti- 
quity, and embraced freemen alone; and if it has 
not extirpated, it has ceased to countenance openly 
such anomalous vices as disgraced even the best ages 
of Greece and Rome. But the parallel must here 
break off. No Christian state has hitherto devised 
or effected a system of public education worthy to be 
put in the scale with that of Greece. We have yet 
much to learn from both the Dorian and Ionian races 
in the art of rendering the masses intelligent, healthy, 
and alert. 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 227 

The virtues of the Romans, which elicited the ap- 
plause of the most ethical of historians, were civil and 
political rather than intellectual. Polybius, who had 
beheld the arts and refinements of Greece unim- 
paired by conquest and unvitiated by neglect, pre- 
ferred to them the hardy Roman qualities of legisla- 
tion and government. The most accomplished of the 
Latin poets agreed with the grave historian in this 
estimate of his countrymen, and bade them leave to 
others the sculptor's and the painter's art, and devote 
themselves to law, administration, and agriculture. 
In whatsoever related to art and education, indeed, 
Rome, as compared with Greece, or even Etruria, 
was rude and uninventive, and even on its colossal 
roads and aqueducts is impressed the stamp of ma- 
terial energy more than of grace or contrivance. The 
popular amusements of Rome reflected the practical 
genius of its people. They were symbolic of war 
and agriculture. The games of the Circus mimicked 
the strife of the battle-field; and the vernal and au- 
tumnal festivals represented by their altars of sod and 
their garlands of flowers the simple thanksgivings of 
the tillers of the soil. Even from the earliest times 
an ethical, and not an artistic spirit, is visible in their 
recreations, and in their seasons of relaxation they in- 
dulged in mementos of the precariousness of life. Of 
all Roman exhibitions, the Secular Games were, both 
from their occasion and their ceremonial, the most 
suggestive of sad and sober thoughts. They were 



228 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

celebrated, in compliance with a cyclical computation 
of the Etruscan s, once only in a hundred or a hundred 
and ten years ; the ambition or policy of the Caesars, 
indeed, sometimes abridged the regular term; but 
even a jubilee occurring once only in fifty years, is 
well adapted to inspire the spectators with solemn 
reflections. The usual interval, however, between the 
Secular Games exceeded the ordinary term of life; and 
as none of the spectators had already seen them, none 
could flatter themselves with the hope of beholding 
them again. The sacrifices were performed during 
three nights on the banks of the Tiber ; the darkness 
was dispelled by innumerable lamps and torches, and 
the proper silence of the hour was broken by music 
and dancing. Heralds, some days before the solem- 
nity commenced, invited the citizens to a spectacle 
which no one had ever beheld, and none would be- 
hold again. The fruits of the earth were offered to 
the Destinies, and a chorus of twenty-seven youths 
and as many virgins of noble families, whose parents 
were both alive, implored, in appropriate hymns, the 
gods in favour of the present and of the rising gene- 
ration. A more striking contrast can hardly be con- 
ceived than that which this grave religious spectacle 
presents to the daylight cheerfulness and redun- 
dant life of an Olympic Festival. It was difficult, 
indeed, to make the senate or people of Rome laugh 
at anything short of buffoonery ; or to rouse their 
emotions by anything except blows and bloodshed. 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 229 

They would hurry out of the theatre from the woes 
of Atreus or the delicate wit of the Adelphi, on the 
first call of the "elephants" or "rope-dancers" in 
the streets ; and Ennius then, like Shakespeare now, 
was unpalatable to the benches, unless armies swept 
across the stage, and the wardrobe blazed with pur- 
ple and gold. And hitherto we have noticed the 
least noxious of Roman spectacles. It was a vir- 
tuous age when a few elephants driven by slaves 
across the arena contented the people ; it was a mo- 
derate one when a few pairs of gladiators sufficed for 
the consular or praetorian games. Lord Bacon has 
pronounced that — "the triumph amongst the Ro- 
mans was not pageants or gaudery, but one of the 
wisest and noblest institutions that ever was; for it 
contained three things — honour to the general, riches 
to the treasury out of the spoils, and donatives to the 
army." The triumph however, with all deference to 
so high an authority, we believe to have been one of 
the effective causes in producing that hardness of 
heart which marked all the dealings of Rome with 
the conquered and the slave. It inured the people 
to regard with callousness or exultation private suf- 
fering and public mutations. Kings bound in chains 
and nobles in links of iron, and afterwards doomed 
to a swift or lingering death in the Mamertine dun- 
geon or the solitary ergastulum, were spectacles en- 
gendering pride and cruelty, and 'affording no com- 
pensation by their ethical or artistic suggestions. 



230 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

The corollary of the triumph was the combat of wild 
beasts and gladiators. Both the brute and the hu- 
man nature were the captives of the bow and spear ; 
and the victor conceived that he had gained the right 
to torture and destroy either of them for his own 
good pleasure. In the last century of the Common- 
wealth, and under all the worse emperors, the popular 
amusements of the Romans may be summed up under 
the two heads of cruelty and licentiousness. At the 
more cheerful spectacles no modest woman could be 
present, although few Roman matrons and maidens 
were absent from them; from the graver spectacles 
no one could depart without sickness of heart, or 
with hearts deadened and indurated, and lapsed be- 
low all depths of pity or terror. 

The drama can hardly be reckoned among the 
popular amusements of the Romans. National sub- 
jects for theatrical representation, they had none; 
party politics were too acrimonious among them for 
the stories of Coriolanus or Manlius to be safe or at- 
tractive. The deeds of the house of Tarquin, however 
well suited to the tragic muse, reminded them at once 
of their superstitious hatred of the kingly name and 
of the humble origin of the Commonwealth. The 
formality of domestic life and manners left hardly 
any scope or margin for comedy, and grave senators 
ill-brooked jests and intrigues at the expense of their 
haughty Portias and iEmilias. Their comedy was 
accordingly a servile copy of the later comedy of the 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 231 

Greeks, both in its plots, manners, and dramatis per- 
sona. But of Greek manners, the Roman populace 
knew about as much as Rotherhithe knows of Bel- 
gravia ; and the refined wit of Terence was as unin- 
telligible to Caius of the Suburra, as the ' School for 
Scandal ' would be to the frequenters of the Victoria 
Theatre. We need not expatiate on an amusement 
which, being patronized only in the saloons of the 
Scipios, has no claim to the adjunct "popular." The 
Italians, however, though their dramatic literature 
has in all periods been about the most scantily ap- 
pointed in Europe, were nevertheless a highly dra- 
matic race. Their quick emotions express themselves 
in ready and ingenious pantomime, and the native 
farce was the lineal ancestor of the burlesques which, 
from the Alps to the extremity of the peninsula, are 
still a source of the keenest enjoyment to the vulgar. 
Latin literature has sustained no heavier loss than 
that of the Tabulae Atellanse.' They were of a 
higher order than the mimes or farces ; were regular 
compositions, divided into five acts, marked by re- 
fined humour, and acted by free-born citizens. Had 
a single specimen of these native comedies been pre- 
served, we might perhaps have rated Roman comedy 
higher. But equally as respected its political deve- 
lopment and its popular recreations, it was the mis- 
fortune of the Romans to be crushed and corrupted 
by the weight and rapidity of their conquests. A 
martial and agricultural race, hardy, coarse, and un- 



232 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

civilized, was suddenly enriched by the treasures of 
Greece, Asia, and Gaul. License and enjoyment im- 
mediately succeeded to frugal severity of life ; and the 
Romans, too impatient to cultivate their native arts, 
purchased wholesale the ready-made stock of the 
more advanced and ingenious Greeks. Noise, glare, 
and prodigal expenditure were at once the bane of 
the Roman theatre and its literature. Poets and 
actors cannot always be found ; but the artificer and 
the upholsterer are always to be hired, and in the 
pantomime they found ample room for their costly 
and eccentric devices. A numerous and idle popula- 
tion, for whom the theatre was provided gratis, de- 
manded houses too spacious for the human voice, or 
by their rude clamours drowned the recitation of the 
actors. But the pantomime, appealing to the eye 
alone, and admitting of sumptuous decoration, en- 
tranced thousands of spectators, and the most popular 
of Roman dramatic entertainments dispensed with 
the playwright altogether. Of the three favourite 
public recreations of the Romans, the Triumph, the 
Spectacles, and the Theatre, not one promoted the 
refinement of the people, or tended to the encourage- 
ment of the artist. The passion for boxers, fencers, 
and wild beasts survived the Republic and exhausted 
the treasures of the Empire. The most politic and 
virtuous of the Csesars repressed the fury of the peo- 
ple for such exhibitions; but the example of Trajan 
and the Antonines was disregarded by Commodus 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 233 

and Caracalla, and when the capital of the Empire 
was transplanted to the shores of the Bosphorus, the 
enormities of the pantomime and the race-course mi- 
grated also from the Colosseum to the Hippodrome. 

That we may not be supposed to have exaggerated 
the scale of the public amusements of Rome, or their 
demoralizing effects on the spectators, we add the 
following brief sketches of three remarkable specta- 
cles at eras very distant from one another, — two of 
which were exhibited in the Plain of Mars, at Rome, 
and the third in the Circus at Constantinople. 

1 . In the 700th year of the City, the popularity of 
Cneius Pompeius was on the wane, and he laboured 
to revive it by the magnificence of his exhibitions. 
Hitherto the Roman theatres had been built of wood, 
and were removed after the spectacles had terminated. 
Now a theatre was constructed of stone, and designed 
for permanence. Forty thousand persons, no small 
portion of the resident population of the city, were 
accommodated within its walls ; and it was decorated 
with such a profusion of gold, marble, and gems, 
as had never yet been witnessed out of Alexandria 
or Babylon, when " Egypt with Assyria strove in 
luxury." The consecration of this theatre, which, 
as a pretext for its permanence, was dedicated to 
Venus Victrix, was celebrated with music, chariot 
races, and all the games of the palaestra. During 
five successive days, five hundred lions were hunted 
and slaughtered in the arena. Eighteen elephants 



234 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

were made to fight with trained bands of gladiators ; 
and the cries and agonies of these noble and saga- 
cious animals inspired even the brutalized crowd with 
pity and disgust. . Stage plays were combined with 
these grosser spectacles; but the verses of Pacuvius 
and Ennius were imperfectly heard amid the din and 
tumult of such an assembly, and the games broke up 
amid general murmurs at the inefficiency of the dis- 
play, and the exhibitor's bad taste. 

2. Three centuries had elapsed, and the extrava- 
gances of the arena had kept pace with the corrup- 
tion of the times and the prodigality of the Caesars, 
when Carinus surpassed all his predecessors by the 
pomp with which he celebrated the Roman games. 
They had been established by the founder of the city, 
and, with few interruptions, were exhibited annually 
during a period of nearly one thousand years. On 
this occasion they were displayed in the amphitheatre 
of Titus, which has obtained and so well deserves the 
epithet of Colossal. Into the huge ellipse of this 
vast conclave, sixty-four vomitories poured forth an 
immense multitude, without trouble or confusion. 
The slopes of the interior were filled and surrounded 
by sixty or eighty rows of marble seats, covered with 
cushions, and capable of containing above fourscore 
thousand spectators. The senatorial, equestrian, and 
plebeian orders — these empty distinctions were re- 
tained even under the equality of despotism — each 
occupied its peculiar station; and in the centre, a 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 235 

golden canopy, and the glittering cuirasses of the 
body-guard, marked out the imperial box. The 
spectators were protected from the sun and rain by 
purple awnings, occasionally drawn over their heads. 
Fountains cooled and aromatics impregnated the air 
with grateful odours ; and the stage itself was strewn 
with parti-coloured sand, arranged in devices, like 
the pattern of a carpet. The scenery and mechanism 
of the Drama corresponded to the luxury of the thea- 
tre. The stage itself was shifted according to the 
exigencies of the performance. At one moment, it 
presented a vast lake covered with armed vessels, and 
replenished with the monsters of the deep; at another, 
the spectators beheld the garden of the Hesperides, or 
the rocks and caverns of Thrace. The appointments 
of the Circus were not less sumptuous. The wild 
beasts were surrounded by a sylvan scene. A forest 
of large trees, torn up by the roots, was transplanted 
into the midst of the arena. This umbrageous space 
was immediately filled with a thousand ostriches, a 
thousand stags, a thousand fallow-deer, and a thou- 
sand wild-boars, all of which were indiscriminately 
slaughtered before evening. On the following day, a 
hundred lions, a hundred lionesses, two hundred 
leopards, and three hundred wild boars, were massa- 
cred ; and, amid such profusion, we may credit the 
statement of a contemporary poet, that the nets de- 
signed as a defence against the wild beasts were of 
gold wire, that the porticoes were gilded, and the 



236 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

balustrades which divided the rows of spectators, 
studded with a mosaic of precious stones. It is 
needless to comment upon the splendour and bar- 
barism of such popular amusements. 

3. But these were trivial and even harmless follies 
compared with the factions and frenzy of the Byzan- 
tine hippodrome. It is not easy to decide whether 
the capital of the Eastern Empire suffered more from 
the feuds of the Church or of the Circus. The elec- 
tion of a bishop or a patriarch was not seldom ac- 
companied with bloodshed; and the factions of the 
charioteers on more than one occasion suspended the 
actioDs of Government, and shook the imperial throne. 
The lively fancy of the Greeks, so alert in splitting 
hairs in the sublimest mysteries of religion, was 
equally active in ascribing symbolic meanings to the 
colours worn on the race-course. The white was 
supposed to be typical of the snows of winter, the red 
of the summer dog-star, the green of the verdure of 
spring, and the blue or azure of the mingled tints of 
autumn. Omens were drawn from their respective 
victories ; and the bettors on a favourite colour con- 
ceived that on the issue of their wager depended, not 
only money and estates, but also a plentiful harvest 
or a prosperous navigation. Twenty-five heats were 
run in the same day ; and, as each faction furnished 
one chariot for every course, one hundred chariots in 
the same day started for the goal. It would have 
been happy for the State, if the contests had been 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 237 

limited to the Circus. But political passions were in- 
fused into popular amusement, and the greens and 
blues alternately enjoyed and abused the pleasures of 
victory. Families were split into opposite factions; 
quarters of the city were distracted by irreconcileable 
feuds ; the Caesars themselves took part with one or 
the other livery; and lust, rapine, and murder ranged, 
unreproved and unchecked, under the sway of fa- 
vourite charioteers. Their occasional union was even 
more fatal to public order than their ordinary divi- 
sion ; and, at one crisis of these Saturnalia, the royal 
galleys were moored at the garden gate of the Bla- 
chernal palace, ready to convey the trembling Em- 
peror and his household to some safe and distant re- 
treat. From the capital, this pestilence was diffused 
into the provinces and cities of the East: Antioch 
and Alexandria were torn by the factions of the race- 
course: and the excesses and extravagances of an 
idle and useless recreation that wasted the strength 
and treasures of the Empire, may fairly be enume- 
rated among the causes of its decrepitude and 
decline. 

Whatever may have been the doctrinal influence of 
Christianity upon the vices and follies of a super- 
annuated fabric of society, its higher and more severe 
morality cannot be questioned. Even the selfish in- 
terests of mankind were enlisted in favour of a creed 
which promoted the household virtues and family 
union, and restrained crimes of such flagrant dye as 



238 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

convulsed the later days of the Pagan world, The 

fathers of the Church have often been censured for 

the intolerant zeal of their attacks on art and the 

t 
theatre; but to understand and excuse them, it is 

only necessary for us to contemplate what dramatic 
exhibitions had become. Even the foregoing sketches 
of the license of the Roman amphitheatre and the 
Byzantine race-course will suffice to justify Chrysos- 
tom or Tertullian's indignation at the spectacles, and 
to accept even the aid of bigotry against a moral pes- 
tilence so deeply rooted and so widely diffused. The 
strong virtues of the barbarians in time seconded the 
reclamations of the Church; and, although the amuse- 
ments of Christendom are not unstained by cruelty 
and license, they have never, in the worst epochs, 
approached the excesses of either capital of the Ro- 
man Empire. 

Our route would be too devious were we to trace 
the various popular amusements of Europe, after it 
was broken up into communities, each displaying its 
several character. We must content ourselves with 
arranging, under a few distinct heads, the recreations 
which expressed the pleasures or the passions of the 
people. For centuries after its emancipation from 
the yoke of Rome, the normal condition of Europe 
was one of war and isolation. There was little inter- 
course between its kingdoms ; there were few diplo- 
matic transactions between its crowns; the sea was 
insecure; the great roads which Rome had drawn 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 239 

from every province of its empire to the Milliarium 
in the forum were neglected or broken up ; and each 
petty state was at leisure to mature and develope its 
own institutions and amusements. Between the cities 
and the country a marked distinction had grown up. 
The recreations of the nobles were the chase and the 
tournament: those of the citizens, the processions and 
symbolisms of the guilds. The one naturally displayed 
the image of war : the other exhibited the works and 
benefits of industry and peace. As an example of 
these general characteristics, we will dwell for an in- 
stant upon the opposite amusements of the Spaniards 
and the Flemings, as respectively the exponents of 
nations great in arms and thrifty and splendid in 
peace. 

The Spaniards were in many of their predilections 
genuine descendants of Rome. They hated commerce, 
and willingly resigned retail and mechanical trades 
into the hands of Moriscos, Germans, or French, or 
any strangers who had settled among them — much as 
the Romans left their shops and warehouses to Greek 
or Syrian freedmen and slaves. The love of idleness 
was accompanied with a passion for amusement, and 
the recreations of the Spaniards were fierce, sombre, 
and gorgeous in their character. For the splendour 
of their tournaments, we need only refer to their 
ballad literature ; for the savage license of the bull- 
fight, to every book of travels in the Peninsula ; and 
for the sumptuousness of their theatrical decorations, 



240 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

to the records of their Drama, and even the stage di- 
rections of their plays. It was in vain for the Cortes 
to express, as they did as early as 1555, their disap- 
probation of the bull-fights. The zest for them was 
too deeply seated in the temper of the people. It 
was useless for the treasurers of the royal household 
to remonstrate against the profusion of the Theatre 
Royal ; the nobles demanded and the king sanctioned 
the outlay. With the attachment to habit and the 
aversion from change that still mark the Spanish 
people, the tournament lingered among them long 
after it became an empty and unmeaning spectacle in 
the rest of Europe. " The Spaniard of 1840," writes 
George Borrow, "is the Spaniard of four centuries 
ago;" he still delights to charge the bull with his 
lance, and drive him down the narrow mountain 
track to the river; he is a tamer of horses; a be- 
liever in wizards; a sworn foe to Jews and Moors, 
and labour; his repose cannot be too profound, his 
paroxysms of recreation and enjoyment too fervid or 
fierce. 

His Flemish and Dutch subjects presented equally 
in their occupations and amusements the most com- 
plete contrast to the Spaniard. The wealthy and 
comfortable burghers of Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges, 
and Leyden, had small delight in war or the chase, 
in torturing beasts, or in the savour of roasted here- 
tics. Their delight was to see, on occasions of cere- 
mony or rejoicing, oxen roasted whole in the market- 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 241 

place, wine gushing from the pipes of the fountains, 
men climbing high poles, and women running races 
for prizes, and festive lanterns burning at night on 
the belfries of their cities. The rhetorical guilds ol 
the Flemings were also in marked contrast to the 
dramatic entertainments of the Spaniards. The fancy 
of the poet and the stores of classic or romantic story 
were ransacked for the uses of the theatres of Madrid 
and Seville; and, with the exception of moveable 
scenery, they lacked little of the pomp and splendour 
of Parisian or London playhouses. The imagination 
of the Netherlanders was more easily contented, or of 
a more practical kind. Their spectacles embodied, in 
sensible imagery, wise saws and pregnant maxims, 
and symbolized the household and commercial virtues 
that render their possessors easy in person and in 
circumstances. A high day at Madrid in the reign 
of Philip IV. was in all essential respects the image 
of a high day in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. 
The nobles, mounted on Arabian barbs, carried an 
estate on their backs invested in silks, gems, and 
costly armour, and paraded their finery before the 
dark eyes hardly concealed by the lattices or veils 
which the semi-oriental jealousy of Spanish fathers, 
brothers, and husbands devised and demanded. The 
Flemings visited one another on gala- days, dressed in 
cumbrous velvets and stiff brocades, and were so- 
lemnly drawn in antique and richly adorned coaches, 
displaying on their panels the strangest allegorical 



242 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

emblems of peace, plenty, and thrift. The fortunes 
and character of the nations were reflected in these 
their popular amusements. The Netherlander grew 
and remained rich"; the Spaniards became, and have 
remained poor unto this day. The mines of the 
Indies poured their wealth eventually into the laps 
of the Flemings and the Hollanders; since Antwerp 
and Rotterdam supplied Seville and Barcelona with 
the wares which the Spaniard deemed it beneath his 
dignity to manufacture, or even to vend when im- 
ported. "More business," says a shrewd Venetian 
envoy, "is done in Antwerp in a month than at 
Cadiz or Barcelona in two years." 

We must afford space for one more glimpse at the 
recreations of Southern Europe before turning to the 
popular amusements of our own land. Florence, we 
are told by the chroniclers, Malaspini and Villani, 
was, towards the end of the thirteenth century, emi- 
nently prosperous and happy. The city abounded in 
mirth and festivity: jugglers, buffoons, and mounte- 
banks poured in from all the Italian states to share 
the bounty of its princely merchants, who, although 
generally plain and frugal in their private life and 
households, were sumptuous and hospitable in their 
public entertainments. Easter was an especial season 
for revelry. The wealthier Florentines then kept 
open house, and welcomed multitudes of poets, mu- 
sicians, dancers, jesters, players, and charlatans of 
every sort, and none of those who pleased in order to 






POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 243 

live were permitted to depart without considerable 
largesse, whether in the form of money, or of rich 
dresses and ornaments. 

In the sonnets of Folgore da San Gimignano, a 
poet of the year 1260, we obtain an insight into the 
amusements of the gentlemen of Siena at that period. 
The bard follows the approved almanac-fashion in 
prescribing to his readers what they are to eat, drink, 
and avoid, and how to disport themselves in each 
month in order to cause their days to pass pleasantly. 
We select a few instances of his comfortable counsels. 

In January he bids his friends to keep large fires 
in well-lit rooms; to have their bed-chambers splen- 
didly furnished with silken sheets and fur coverlets. 
The servants must be snugly clad in woollens and 
cloth of Douay ; and there should be plenty of con- 
fectionery. Out-of-doors, the gentlemen are to amuse 
themselves by throwing soft snow-balls at the young 
ladies whom they may happen to meet in their walks. 
When tired with these exertions, they must take a 
good allowance of repose. 

This dolce far niente however is not to endure for 
ever. Even the existence of a Sybarite, if persevered 
in too long, will grow tedious. So in February these 
pleasant gentlemen must rise betimes and ' ' hunt the 
deer," the wild goat and boar, "with hound and 
horn." At night they shall come merrily home to 
excellent wine, a smoking kitchen, and a song. 

In March, when the sun rides high in Aries, and 



244 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

strong exercise is not so needful to warm the blood, 
fishing is to be substituted for hunting ; they are now 
to migrate from their town-houses to their suburban 
villas and palaces, and to procure every delight that 
will make time run smoothly ; but without monk or 
priest. u Let those crazy shavelings/' says the irre- 
verent poet, " go and preach, for they abound in lies." 
The Italians appear to have known nothing of Parson 
Supple, who could ride nearly as well and drink quite 
as well as Squire Western himself. 

In April the scene changes to an Arcadian life, 
amid flowery fields, fountains, and lawns; and the 
general prescription is — mules, palfreys, and steeds 
from Spain, songs and dances from Provence, and 
new instruments of music fresh from Germany. 
There is, indeed, much national physiognomy in- 
volved in these maxims. Monks are excluded from 
this paradise, but not Eves; for dames and damsels 
saunter along with these gay Sienese bachelors, 
through groves and gardens where all would honour 
them, and bend their knee before the queen, the lady 
of beauty, to whom the poet offers a crown of jewels, 
even of the finest jewels of Prester John, King of 
Babylonia. 

May brought with it troops of light well-trained 
horses, springy, spirited, and swift, with head and 
breast well armed; and tinkling bells and banners, 
and rich trappings; many-coloured mantles, light 
round shields and polished weapons, which were not 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 245 

to be borne in vain, for there must be breaking of 
spears and shock of lances; and the reward of chi- 
valry shall be flowers of every hue, showers of gar- 
lands from balcony and casement, and flights of golden 
oranges tossed up in turn ; and youths and maidens 
kissing mouth and cheek, and discoursing of happi- 
ness and love. 

We have not space to follow this joyous calendar 
through the rolling year, and recommend such of our 
readers as may have been led to envy life at Siena, 
to procure the poems of Messer San Gimignano. 
The counsels for October however are too extraordi- 
nary to be passed over. The poet seems to have 
thought, with the adage, that — 

" He who drinks and goes to bed sober, 
Falls as the leaves do, and dies in October." 

For then, he says, it is good to visit a house where a 
good stud is kept, to follow sports on foot or horse- 
back, dance at night, drink good wine and get tipsy ; 
" as in good sooth there is no better life." And after 
the morning's ablutions, wine and roast meat are once 
more an excellent medicine, for they will give good 
spirits, and preserve them in better health than that 
of fishes in lake, river, or sea, "because thus they 
would be leading a more Christian life ! " 

An unlucky wag of the time, Cene della Citarra of 
Arezzo, parodied these sonnets of Messer Folgore's, 
and imparted his notions of the enjoyments of the 
poor. We regret our inability to look on this picture 

m 2 



246 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

also, since the two would enable us to present a tole- 
rably complete outline of the popular amusements of 
Italy. 

It is much to be regretted that those who have 
written on symbolisms, have for the most part viewed 
the subject from merely a theological point of view, 
or at least have restricted their researches to the bare 
demands of archaeology. The subject of popular 
amusements would derive much light from a history 
of the symbols adopted by various nations, and espe- 
cially from those belonging to the trading corpora- 
tions and guilds. We can afford however to hint 
only at an unworked vein of inquiry that would pro- 
bably illustrate better than the history of cabinets 
and campaigns the social development and peculiari- 
ties of a people. The guilds of Europe, with their 
banners, devices, and periodical festivals, date from a 
remote antiquity, and although they were consider- 
ably modified by Christian emblems and ideas, they 
lurk in many an obscure corner of Roman and ori- 
ental record. 

The gravity with which we Englishmen disport 
ourselves, appeared to Froissart, accustomed to the 
lighter and more graceful mirth of France, a feature 
of peculiar significance in the national character. It 
is indeed impossible to deny that the English have a 
relish for broad fun, since have we not Fielding's, 
and Smollett's, and Dickens's novels, and Shake- 
speare's Falstaff, constables, and clowns? But we 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 247 

are not a demonstrative people like the Athenians 
and the French, and although our comedy is as rich 
as that of Aristophanes and Moliere, our assemblies 
and recreations have assuredly an air of steady and 
serious business. We would not indeed exchange 
the general sobriety of our cities for the indiscrimi- 
nate levity of Vienna, nor are we disposed to regard 
it as a symptom of any constitutional or deep-seated 
melancholy. We ascribe it rather to the more do- 
mestic character of our habits, as compared with 
those of most Continental nations. Even sadness can 
seldom maintain its equable demeanour in a crowd, 
where the attention is perpetually diverted from self 
by the passing objects, the converse and gesticula- 
tions going on on every side. The liveliest people of 
antiquity were the Athenians, whose life was almost 
passed in the streets; external air, and restlessness, 
are provocatives, if not to mirth, at least to com- 
panionship; and a population that has scarcely a 
home, is generally to outward semblance noisy and 
demonstrative. If physiognomy indeed be an index 
of the cheerfulness or the gravity of a people, we are 
inclined to think that an English crowd will bear 
comparison with that of any country for a general 
expression of content. More anxious faces will be 
met with in Paris or New York in an hour than 
London exhibits in a week ; although indeed on the 
occasion of a spectacle or a general holiday, there will 
be in both the former cities greater noise and osten- 



248 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

tation of pleasure. We seldom scream, shout, or give 
way to inextinguishable laughter ; but neither do we 
so often shed tears, rend our hair, or commit suicide. 
If we possess no sober certainty of waking bliss as 
a nation, and exercise to the full our privilege of 
grumbling at the weather, the crops, and the Govern- 
ment, we have fewer emeutes, fewer revolutions, fewer 
breakings-up of the great central abysses of passion, 
than have occurred among nations claiming to be 
livelier and more sensitive than ourselves. But our 
immediate business is with the national character as 
exhibited or suggested in its seasons of relaxation; 
and it must be admitted that these for the most part 
are of a saturnine complexion. A manly vigour from 
the earliest times is perceptible in the recreations of 
the English nation. After the first pressure of the 
Norman yoke was lightened, and the conquerors had 
ceased to regard the conquered with scornful or jea- 
lous eyes, the native sports of the Saxons were per- 
mitted them and even encouraged. The earlier wars 
of the Norman kings with France had been waged 
chiefly with the lances and battle-axes of their own 
retainers; but the efficiency of the English archers 
manifested itself so strikingly on many critical occa- 
sions, that the practice of the bow was diligently en- 
forced by the Plantagenets. Nor after the close of 
the Barons' wars did the Tudors overlook this formi- 
dable adjunct to the rude artillery of their day ; and 
indeed throughout the fifteenth century, nothing more 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 249 

surely proves the good understanding between the 
Government and the people than the universal prac- 
tice of bearing arms. Every man was a soldier, and 
equipped according to his rank and means with cor- 
responding armour and weapons. The exercises of 
the tilt-yard at the Hall or Castle were reserved for 
those of gentle birth; and the imitation of war — often 
very near* its reality — was at once a high enjoyment 
and a noble accomplishment. It was enacted by 
various statutes, commencing with an Act passed in 
the Parliament at Winchester, in the thirteenth year 
of Edward I., "that every man have harness in his 
house to keep the peace after the ancient assize, — that 
is to say, every man between fifteen years of age and 
sixty years, shall be assessed and sworn to armour ac- 
cording to the quantity of his lands and goods." As 
the bow was the favourite weapon of the English pea- 
santry, regular practice was enforced, and shooting 
was both the training and the amusement of all 
whose property in land did not amount to forty shil- 
lings in value. Every hamlet had its pair of butts : 
and on Sundays and holidays — our ancestors would 
have marvelled at the dedication of the Sabbath to 
religion, sloth, or drink — all able-bodied men were 
required to present themselves in the field, and to 
employ their leisure hours "as valyant Englishmen 
ought to do." Mayors, bailiffs, and headboroughs 
were directed to see these manly amusements obser- 
ved ; and if they neglected to do so, were fined twenty 



250 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

shillings for each proven omission of their duty. It 
is interesting to remark how sedulously our legisla- 
tors five centuries ago discouraged " unthrifty games/' 
and especially such as, being of a sedentary kind, 
might be practised in taverns and places of ill-resort. 
Numerous are the statutes levelled by the Parliaments 
of the Plantagenets against " the plays of bowls, quoits, 
dice, kails;" as numerous the complaints of veteran 
soldiers against the addiction of the younger sort of 
recruits to dancing, carding, and dicing ! Many of 
the national sports indeed have justly fallen into 
comparative desuetude, and we now seldom read of 
bull-baitings or prize-fights. With these and with 
all amusements that involve cruelty to animals, or 
brutalize those who practise them, we can well dis- 
pense ; yet we may be allowed to regret the abeyance 
of foot-ball on the village camping land, and the pe- 
riodical matches of wrestlers at wakes and fairs. It 
is one of the highest recommendations of cricket that 
it brings together men of all degrees ; and we quite 
go with Lord John Manners in his benevolent wish to 
devise and promote all such recreations as equalize 
ranks, and wherein superior skill is the only distinc- 
tion. The benefits of such equalization were proved 
in the wars of Edward III. It is observed by the 
contemporary chronicles, that one cause of the higher 
courage and more effective discipline of the English 
at Crecy and Poitiers was attributable to the terms 
on which the chivalry of England lived with its yeo- 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 251 

manry. In the French armies, the archers and light 
troops were held aloof by the knights and their 
squires as a rabble, good only for the prelude to the 
fight, but infinitely beneath the rank or notice of the 
men-at-arms. Whereas in the English host a com- 
mon cordiality and a generous emulation pervaded 
all the ranks ; the serried line of the archers had its 
place and consideration as well as the mounted co- 
lumns of horse, were taken into account by the com- 
missariat, and scrupulously tended in the hospital. 
The effects of this cohesion were felt long after the 
bow was forgotten as a weapon of offence ; and it is 
in some measure owing to the more comprehensive 
character of our national amusements, that amid our 
acrimonious political contests and even occasional re- 
volutions, there has never been such a severance of 
classes as hastened the downfall of the commonwealth 
of Rome and the monarchy of France. 

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, masques 
and plays constituted a prominent feature in the pas- 
times of the English people. The world has hitherto 
seen three great dramatic eras in three distinct na- 
tions; and the eminence of Greece, Spain, and Eng- 
land, in this province of art, may be attributed to the 
intense sympathy of their population generally with 
dramatic passion and pageantry. Of Greece and 
Spain it must suffice to observe, that their great dra- 
matic eras correspond nearly with the most vigorous 
development of the national energies. Greece owed 



252 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

to the fusion of classes, resulting from her invasion 
by Persia and to the national exultation consequent 
on its conclusion, all the nobler and most vital ele- 
ments of her dramatic literature. The restless ac- 
tivity which propelled Spain in the fifteenth century 
towards enterprise in Europe and the New World, 
broke down in some degree her provincial differences 
and isolation, and fused into one mass the conflicting 
and diversified elements of her people. Her theatre 
was the exponent of the national triumphs, and re- 
flected to her, in the noblest mirrors of poetry, the 
deeds and sufferings that had rendered her great. 
Her dramatic literature indeed was the only point at 
which the upper and lower classes of the Spanish 
people really osculated. The Court and the nobles 
were too deeply entrenched behind their own pride 
and immunities to blend readily with the middle 
orders; the towns were sharply distinguished from 
the country; the inland provinces, where the people 
were shepherds or vine-growers, from the coast pro- 
vinces, where the inhabitants were engrossed by either 
regular or irregular trade. In the Spanish drama 
however there existed a common point of union for 
all these classes, and it exhibits the characteristics of 
the nation even more fully than the popular specta- 
cles. The English drama rests upon a broader basis 
than that of either Athens or Madrid. The avenues 
to it had been prepared in the ruder periods of the 
Plantagenets. For not only were masques and plays 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 253 

acted at Court, or in the castles of the nobles, but 
itinerant companies wandered,, as in ancient Greece, 
from village to village, performing in barns or taverns, 
or in the farmhouse kitchen, Moralities and Mys- 
teries — the preludial notes of Marlowe and Shake- 
speare. To ourselves, who can measure the effect of 
such rude foreshadowings only by the impression they 
would now produce, these legends, in which saints and 
angels are actors, and the Deity himself often an in- 
terlocutor, wear the semblance of profanity. Yet it 
is a semblance only, for they were believed when re- 
presented, were conceived in good faith, and were 
acted with devout earnestness. They were no more 
profane than the early quaintnesses of painting, or 
the subtle investigations of the schoolmen. They 
were the expressions of an imaginative age upon 
subjects which reject the cold conclusions of the rea- 
son. They were, moreover, at a time when few could 
read and fewer write, the alphabet of a people who 
felt strongly even if they understood darkly ; and to 
the passionate emotions occasionally displayed in the 
" Moralities" we owe much of the loftier and more 
eloquent passion of the national drama. All great 
nations are indeed dramatic, because life is at one 
period of their fortunes a simple phenomenon and an 
overpowering mystery. They see in part, and they 
prophesy in part; and both their vision and their 
apprehensions are in earnest. To produce a great 
dramatist, the drama must previously be the passion 

N 



254 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

of a people. The drama in the sixteenth century was 
the especial amusement of the English from the pa- 
lace to the village-green. The English were then in 
a similar condition to the Athenians at the epoch of 
their invasion by Persia. They felt strong in them- 
selves and in their power over circumstances. They 
had survived wars that drained the nation's best 
blood; they were troubled neither with social pro- 
blems, nor subjective speculations; their vigour and 
spirits were exuberant, and new avenues seemed open- 
ing on all sides for their sinewy strength of mind and 
body. The resources of ancient literature had re- 
cently been opened to them ; the new products of the 
Christian mind of Europe were being daily brought 
within their ken. Their native ballads and legends 
were still sung or recited in streets, markets, and by 
firesides ; and their fancy was stimulated by the re- 
velation of lands beyond what had been long supposed 
to be a trackless and impassable ocean. Under this 
combination of emotions and circumstances, the En- 
glish drama began to erect the steps of that august 
throne which Shakespeare was destined to occupy. 

Hereafter we may return to the subject of Popular 
Amusements. We have surveyed the subject briefly 
under various phases — some at the culmination, others 
at the commencement of their growth. But a field 
far beyond our present limits remains to be explored ; 
and we can at present only find room for a few brief 
remarks on the importance of national pastimes to all 



POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 255 

who study the past or speculate upon the future his- 
tory of the civilized world. 

A trivial and inexpressive portion only of national 
life is reflected in the public acts of a people. We may 
comprehend the tissue of its wars and negotiations., 
its commerce, arts, and manufactures, without there- 
fore apprehending its passions and prejudices, or the 
general cltnamen of its temper. What it does spon- 
taneously is the emblem and exponent of its interior 
being ; and since amusements cannot be enforced and 
must be spontaneous, it is worth the while of histo- 
rians to read the public history of a nation by the 
light of its recreations. No less incumbent is it on 
the legislators, for the present and the future, to study 
the undisguised aspect of the people for whom it le- 
gislates. Charles and Laud might have saved their 
own heads, and the removal of a throne and hierarchy 
to boot, had they condescended to survey calmly the 
physiognomy of England in their days. Not a small 
blunder might recently have been shunned, if the true 
significance of the cry for " Sunday recreations" had 
been more subtly scrutinized. It is a question that 
should have been treated on its broadest ground or 
left undisturbed. Well were it, too, for the Church, 
and for every denomination which has intentionally 
or inadvertently supported her on this question, to 
ponder whither they are wending by their opposition 
to a just demand, or by their partial compliance with 
a senseless clamour. If not determined now, it must 



256 ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA. 

at least very soon be mooted and decided, whether 
Governments shall deal only with the hard and repul- 
sive elements of social policy, or whether they shall 
extend their cares and studies to the more spontaneous 
and genial desires of the community. The State is 
no less a parent than a schoolmaster; and while it 
necessarily provides penalties for the erring members 
of its household, it should with equal vigilance and 
sympathy afford space and verge enough for the re- 
creations which may divert the masses from sensual 
indulgence and specious temptations, and diffuse a 
relish for exercises and pastimes that promote at once 
health of body and cheer and content of spirit. 



THE END. 



JOHN EDWARD TAYLOR, PRINTER, 
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